The disaster kit
Jan. 21st, 2011 01:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snousleI've been working on and off for a while on a disaster kit. I figure, if we're already paying $800 a year for homeowners insurance, which covers the risk of isolated disasters, it makes no sense to completely ignore the risk of large-scale disaster. The chance of a war, major epidemic, or whatnot is surely not all that much lower than the risk of a house fire, and costs much less to insure against. I think the reason most people don't consider this is because it takes some thought - you can't just write a check to an insurance company - and because it carries the taint of paranoia.
I'm not big on dwelling on the negative, and conjuring up particular images of why one might need such a kit. What matters is accepting that the risk is not zero, and actually having the kit. Not talking about it, but actually having it. I say this because some people seem so preoccupied with fantasizing about disaster that they never actually do anything about it.
Here's some of the stuff that's getting put away this weekend:
This is about 150 lbs of grains, kosher salt and vinegar for preserving game, mylar bags, oxygen absorbers, storage buckets, and a heat sealer.
Since there isn't much in the way of accountability for something you don't intend to use, the mass market has done a poor job of providing good solutions. I came across a Wal-Mart product that advertised a "90 day supply" of dried food in a bucket, consisting of shitty, low-quality manufactured products - as with cheap gift baskets, probably stuff someone just wanted to get rid of - that will almost certainly be nasty and rancid within a decade. What a bummer that would be. Worse, there's no way it could feed you for 90 days; 20 would be more like it. These things tend to be expensive, too, even when they're done right.
To that end I am considering using the catering business to sell, at very modest markup, assembled kits. I figure, the more the better. If the real barrier to adaptation of these kits is knowledge and convenience, one might think they could sell rather well in this county.
Anyway, after lots of reading and consideration, I decided that the kits needed to satisfy two major criteria: deliciousness, and permanence. Self-sufficiency is a lot easier when you don't have to suffer with shitty food. Unfortunately, that is in direct conflict with permanence; all food, canned, dry, or otherwise preserved, decays over time and loses its quality. This puts some serious constraints on what things can go in the kit and how they are handled.
I decided against any rotation-based strategies. Too much trouble, and everything has to be kept where you can get at it. With a permanent collection, there's no temptation to slack off and not keep it up, and it can be stored in areas that aren't convenient for anything else, like in a crawlspace under the house.
The things in the kit fell into a few different categories:
Grains - About a pound of grains a day is enough for the foundation of a survival diet, and for quality products they run around a dollar a pound. Since they are cheap, tasty, durable, and easy to store, this represents about 70-80% of the calorie content of the kit.
Storing grains, rather than any romantic fantasy about farming, is where it's at. If you're looking at very long term scenarios, every hundred dollars you spend on grains is worth three months of back-breaking work trying (probably unsuccessfully) to grow food without equipment or fertilizer. Farming is great for, say, cabbage, onions, and herbs, which are valuable for preventing scurvy, and if you have the land it's a sensible part of a plan. But for actual subsistence, it would suck. Whatever scenario you plan for, it is always more sensible to store grains than to try to grow them yourself.
Grains are best kept in heat-sealed mylar bags, with oxygen removed either through the addition of dry ice (about two ounces per bucket) or an oxygen absorber packet. A five gallon bucket with a sealing lid costs about six dollars, a mylar bag and oxygen absorber about a dollar each. The bucket holds about thirty pounds, so "a bucket a month" makes for an easily-remembered rule of thumb. This puts the cost of your core survival ration at just over a dollar a day.
The #1 grain I'm putting down is white calrose rice. This is something that's easy to cook and eat, and you can eat it every day without it getting boring. Brown rice does not keep as well, as the oils it contains go rancid over time. I personally prefer Calrose, and eat it routinely, because its denser, chewier texture is a lot more satisfying than fluffy American-style rice.
The #2 choice is lentils. I personally love lentils and eat them fairly regularly. They cook much, much more quickly than larger beans, and make truly delicious soup.
The four other choices I made are white flour, cornmeal/polenta, black beans, and wheat. Unlike brown rice, unpolished wheat lasts a very long time.
The only real downside of grains is that they have to be cooked. This may or may not be a problem; if you live in Manhattan, fuel might be very hard to come by in a crisis. Here on the ranch, we have an infinite supply of little sticks, which we can use in a StoveTec stove. More on that below.
Durable Frozen Goods - I don't know about you, but I hate canned meat. It's usually low quality and ends up being kind of expensive for what you get. Instead, I'm filling the bottom of the chest freezer with items that don't age at freezing temperatures, and which will last for at least a few months at room temperature. This includes things like dry salami, country ham, jerky, dried fruit, et cetra. Also in this category are certain medications, Vitamin C to prevent scurvy, and so forth.
For my own purposes, I have been making pork confit and pasteurizing it in vacuum-seal bags. These then go into the bottom of the chest freezer for permanent storage. Being relatively dry and packed in fat, freezer burn will never occur. And should the power go out for, say, three months, they will not go bad.
The recipe is straightforward:
Cut the pork into one-pound pieces, generously salt and pepper it, and refrigerate it overnight.
The next day, blot the pork dry with paper towels, and heavily brown the pieces in a dutch oven, over high heat, with enough melted fat to cover it completely. (This takes 10-15 minutes. You must use a solid fat for this.) Drain the pork, and let it cool, then put one piece into each vacuum seal. Ladle some cooking fat in each bag, and refrigerate the bags overnight until the fat solidifies. Be very careful to not get any fat inside the top edge of the bag, and blot up any that does with a paper towel, otherwise the bag will not seal. I generally fold down the lip of the bag so they are at half-height; this lets them stand up on their own and makes it easy to keep them clean.
The next day, vacuum-seal the bags (I have an inexpensive home sealer that works fine), then simmer the bags in water (just below boiling) for two hours. The bags get somewhat soft and are prone to bursting if handled roughly, and they must be kept off the bottom of the pot with some sort of screen so they don't adhere. Finally, cool the bags to room temperature, chill overnight in the refrigerator, then pack them in the bottom of the freezer.
It's a bit of work, but it's also a very handy thing to have around when unexpected guests drop by. What you get is very similar to traditional carnitas and makes awesome tacos.
Canned food - Not as cost effective as grains, but a lot more convenient since it doesn't have to be cooked. Not much to say about this, just buy and store! I have no idea which products will last the longest, but my understanding is that canned food retains nutritional proteins and fats long after it ceases to be appealing. Keeping it cool helps a lot; in general, the rate of degeneration doubles with every 10F increase in temperature. So there is a big difference between fifty degrees and ninety. I'm mostly putting down oil pack tuna and canned fruits. They can be stored in buckets, which keeps them dry, but I'm currently looking for something square that's similarly moisture-proof.
Equipment - This is a more individual thing, but for us the most important item is a couple of StoveTec biomass stoves:
I have four of these, two for regular use and two packed away in the kit. They are simply awesome, and make every other method of wood-fired cooking look ridiculous. Restaurant-range power from sticks and twigs. With oily woods like madrone, they're downright scary.
Wow, this has turned into a much longer post than I had expected. There are a few areas I haven't covered. Water, I don't know much about - we are blessed with a passive, gravity-fed spring water and sanitation system that runs without power, and we keep about 10,000 gallons stored in various tanks. I realize this is a very hard problem for urban dwellers, or in areas where groundwater is too deep for manual pumping. Also, firearms: I'm not really a gun person, and don't really get excited by them, but I still recognize that if you want to take a consistent approach to risk, not having a gun undermines your efforts for no good reason. (That is, for those of us living where it's legal to own one.) Again, it's cheaper than insurance you've likely already paying for, and represents only a fraction of the total cost of preparedness. The intent is not to use it; I think it's perfectly appropriate to leave it locked in a safe indefinitely. But not having it when you really need it would be a super-extra bummer.
There's a lot of different approaches to disaster preparedness and this happens to be the one that works where I'm at. It's something I feel strongly about, not just because it helps me feel calm and secure, but because entire communities become stronger when its prepared to be self-sufficient. I only wish it didn't have such wingnut overtones!
I'm not big on dwelling on the negative, and conjuring up particular images of why one might need such a kit. What matters is accepting that the risk is not zero, and actually having the kit. Not talking about it, but actually having it. I say this because some people seem so preoccupied with fantasizing about disaster that they never actually do anything about it.
Here's some of the stuff that's getting put away this weekend:
This is about 150 lbs of grains, kosher salt and vinegar for preserving game, mylar bags, oxygen absorbers, storage buckets, and a heat sealer.
Since there isn't much in the way of accountability for something you don't intend to use, the mass market has done a poor job of providing good solutions. I came across a Wal-Mart product that advertised a "90 day supply" of dried food in a bucket, consisting of shitty, low-quality manufactured products - as with cheap gift baskets, probably stuff someone just wanted to get rid of - that will almost certainly be nasty and rancid within a decade. What a bummer that would be. Worse, there's no way it could feed you for 90 days; 20 would be more like it. These things tend to be expensive, too, even when they're done right.
To that end I am considering using the catering business to sell, at very modest markup, assembled kits. I figure, the more the better. If the real barrier to adaptation of these kits is knowledge and convenience, one might think they could sell rather well in this county.
Anyway, after lots of reading and consideration, I decided that the kits needed to satisfy two major criteria: deliciousness, and permanence. Self-sufficiency is a lot easier when you don't have to suffer with shitty food. Unfortunately, that is in direct conflict with permanence; all food, canned, dry, or otherwise preserved, decays over time and loses its quality. This puts some serious constraints on what things can go in the kit and how they are handled.
I decided against any rotation-based strategies. Too much trouble, and everything has to be kept where you can get at it. With a permanent collection, there's no temptation to slack off and not keep it up, and it can be stored in areas that aren't convenient for anything else, like in a crawlspace under the house.
The things in the kit fell into a few different categories:
Grains - About a pound of grains a day is enough for the foundation of a survival diet, and for quality products they run around a dollar a pound. Since they are cheap, tasty, durable, and easy to store, this represents about 70-80% of the calorie content of the kit.
Storing grains, rather than any romantic fantasy about farming, is where it's at. If you're looking at very long term scenarios, every hundred dollars you spend on grains is worth three months of back-breaking work trying (probably unsuccessfully) to grow food without equipment or fertilizer. Farming is great for, say, cabbage, onions, and herbs, which are valuable for preventing scurvy, and if you have the land it's a sensible part of a plan. But for actual subsistence, it would suck. Whatever scenario you plan for, it is always more sensible to store grains than to try to grow them yourself.
Grains are best kept in heat-sealed mylar bags, with oxygen removed either through the addition of dry ice (about two ounces per bucket) or an oxygen absorber packet. A five gallon bucket with a sealing lid costs about six dollars, a mylar bag and oxygen absorber about a dollar each. The bucket holds about thirty pounds, so "a bucket a month" makes for an easily-remembered rule of thumb. This puts the cost of your core survival ration at just over a dollar a day.
The #1 grain I'm putting down is white calrose rice. This is something that's easy to cook and eat, and you can eat it every day without it getting boring. Brown rice does not keep as well, as the oils it contains go rancid over time. I personally prefer Calrose, and eat it routinely, because its denser, chewier texture is a lot more satisfying than fluffy American-style rice.
The #2 choice is lentils. I personally love lentils and eat them fairly regularly. They cook much, much more quickly than larger beans, and make truly delicious soup.
The four other choices I made are white flour, cornmeal/polenta, black beans, and wheat. Unlike brown rice, unpolished wheat lasts a very long time.
The only real downside of grains is that they have to be cooked. This may or may not be a problem; if you live in Manhattan, fuel might be very hard to come by in a crisis. Here on the ranch, we have an infinite supply of little sticks, which we can use in a StoveTec stove. More on that below.
Durable Frozen Goods - I don't know about you, but I hate canned meat. It's usually low quality and ends up being kind of expensive for what you get. Instead, I'm filling the bottom of the chest freezer with items that don't age at freezing temperatures, and which will last for at least a few months at room temperature. This includes things like dry salami, country ham, jerky, dried fruit, et cetra. Also in this category are certain medications, Vitamin C to prevent scurvy, and so forth.
For my own purposes, I have been making pork confit and pasteurizing it in vacuum-seal bags. These then go into the bottom of the chest freezer for permanent storage. Being relatively dry and packed in fat, freezer burn will never occur. And should the power go out for, say, three months, they will not go bad.
The recipe is straightforward:
Cut the pork into one-pound pieces, generously salt and pepper it, and refrigerate it overnight.
The next day, blot the pork dry with paper towels, and heavily brown the pieces in a dutch oven, over high heat, with enough melted fat to cover it completely. (This takes 10-15 minutes. You must use a solid fat for this.) Drain the pork, and let it cool, then put one piece into each vacuum seal. Ladle some cooking fat in each bag, and refrigerate the bags overnight until the fat solidifies. Be very careful to not get any fat inside the top edge of the bag, and blot up any that does with a paper towel, otherwise the bag will not seal. I generally fold down the lip of the bag so they are at half-height; this lets them stand up on their own and makes it easy to keep them clean.
The next day, vacuum-seal the bags (I have an inexpensive home sealer that works fine), then simmer the bags in water (just below boiling) for two hours. The bags get somewhat soft and are prone to bursting if handled roughly, and they must be kept off the bottom of the pot with some sort of screen so they don't adhere. Finally, cool the bags to room temperature, chill overnight in the refrigerator, then pack them in the bottom of the freezer.
It's a bit of work, but it's also a very handy thing to have around when unexpected guests drop by. What you get is very similar to traditional carnitas and makes awesome tacos.
Canned food - Not as cost effective as grains, but a lot more convenient since it doesn't have to be cooked. Not much to say about this, just buy and store! I have no idea which products will last the longest, but my understanding is that canned food retains nutritional proteins and fats long after it ceases to be appealing. Keeping it cool helps a lot; in general, the rate of degeneration doubles with every 10F increase in temperature. So there is a big difference between fifty degrees and ninety. I'm mostly putting down oil pack tuna and canned fruits. They can be stored in buckets, which keeps them dry, but I'm currently looking for something square that's similarly moisture-proof.
Equipment - This is a more individual thing, but for us the most important item is a couple of StoveTec biomass stoves:
I have four of these, two for regular use and two packed away in the kit. They are simply awesome, and make every other method of wood-fired cooking look ridiculous. Restaurant-range power from sticks and twigs. With oily woods like madrone, they're downright scary.
Wow, this has turned into a much longer post than I had expected. There are a few areas I haven't covered. Water, I don't know much about - we are blessed with a passive, gravity-fed spring water and sanitation system that runs without power, and we keep about 10,000 gallons stored in various tanks. I realize this is a very hard problem for urban dwellers, or in areas where groundwater is too deep for manual pumping. Also, firearms: I'm not really a gun person, and don't really get excited by them, but I still recognize that if you want to take a consistent approach to risk, not having a gun undermines your efforts for no good reason. (That is, for those of us living where it's legal to own one.) Again, it's cheaper than insurance you've likely already paying for, and represents only a fraction of the total cost of preparedness. The intent is not to use it; I think it's perfectly appropriate to leave it locked in a safe indefinitely. But not having it when you really need it would be a super-extra bummer.
There's a lot of different approaches to disaster preparedness and this happens to be the one that works where I'm at. It's something I feel strongly about, not just because it helps me feel calm and secure, but because entire communities become stronger when its prepared to be self-sufficient. I only wish it didn't have such wingnut overtones!
