Step Thirteen: Food & Water Storage - How to Make a Preparedness Plan that Works & Not Go Broke

“Chance favors the prepared mind.” Louis Pasteur

Step Thirteen: Food & Water Storage

Food storage includes: medical, dental and hygiene needs during a crisis as well as actual food and water.

Warning: If there is a crisis on your list that can take out electricity city wide or larger, you will lose water.

This means that even if you do NOT have any long duration crisis on your crisis list - you still need to think about water at the very least.

All Food Storage Requires:

• A place to store this
• An even cool temperature with very little if any variance (45-72 no more than 10 degree change in temp in under 28-30 hours).
• Dry
• Bug and Rodent free or proof as possible. (Yes the area and not just the container!)

The most common mistakes in Food Storage are:

• Not rotating and utilizing your food stores during non-crisis times. IE: Stock Piling and forgetting.
• Purchasing a “food kit” or all of one type of food preservation technique or “meal in a packet”. “Food Survival Kits” tend to include foods you do not normally eat, are allergic to or are all freeze dried or all canned or all dehydrated or all MRE’s. Most only have about 10 different meals – in a crisis situation you don’t want to contend with the mental depression of “taste bud boredom”.
• Third most common mistake: Attempting to store flour instead of the un-ground grain. Flour only has a 1-2 year shelf life at best, while un-ground grain has a 30+ yr shelf life.

Water

• General Rule with hygiene: MINIMUM is 1 Gallon per person per day
• Human General Average: MINIMUM of 2 liters or 8 cups per day to maintain efficiency; In general one quart of water is needed daily for every 50 pounds of body weight; Children require about 4-6 cups of fluid per day on average.

Factors that Determine the Water Needs for adults, children and pets:

• Age
• Weight - The heavier a human or pet is, usually means they need more water to sustain themselves.
• Activity - The less active one is; the less water they can get away with.
• Health - A female that is pregnant or nursing needs more water than one that is not.
• Dry pet food will require more water for the pet than wet pet food.

Do the Math

• 1 Gallon of Water = a little over 8 pounds
• Water for 1 person for 3 days = about 24 pounds
• Water for 1 person for two weeks (14) days = a little over 116 pounds
• Water for 1 person for 30 days = about 240 pounds

No matter how you look at it that is a lot of water, a lot of weight and a lot of storage space that is needed for just a two week supply for an individual, yet alone an entire family and pets.

Hint: Keep waterless anti-bacterial hand gel and or wet wipes to reduce hygiene water needs.

The survival quantity of 1 gallon per person per day - is just that – the bare, very basic, best case MINIMUM!

Next week is determining if you should stay put or bug-out …

Prepping for Animals, Pets & Livestock http://www.scribd.com/doc/31791013/Prepping-for-Animals-Pets-and-Livestock
2 Food Storage Calculators http://www.scribd.com/doc/42687042/2-Food-Storage-Calculators
Food Storage Mistakes - Yikes! http://www.scribd.com/doc/42251869/Food-Storage-Mistakes-Yikes
Cheap & Cool Pantry Can Organizer http://www.scribd.com/doc/44616263/Cheap-Cool-Pantry-Can-Organizer

*** Storing medications, both RX and OTC are covered in these documents ***
Food Storage - Starting & Maintaining http://www.scribd.com/doc/26564171/Food-Storage-Starting-Maintaining
Food & Water Storage Considerations http://www.scribd.com/doc/30485482/Food-and-Water-Storage-Considerations
Shelf Life Information on Lots of Things http://www.scribd.com/doc/42690147/Shelf-Life-Information-on-Lots-of-Things

"Maybe a person's time would be as well spent raising food
as raising money to buy food."
Frank A. Clark

TNT