Seen “The Hunger Games” or read the book yet? Theres a scene where these people are all thrust into an arena, a short distance away from a pile of weapons and supplies, and when the start signal is given the competitors jump off their starting blocks and run for this mound of goodies. Naturally, the fighting is bloody and furious as everyone tries to take what they need. The heroine is given the advice that when this moment happens, and the starting gun goes off,  she should immediately turn and run the other way, put some distance behind her and let the other competitors kill each other.

This is probably sage advice for any disaster situation. When Katrina is flooding your city do you really want to be prowling the darkened aisles of WalMart with three hundred other desperate (and dangerous) people? Or in line at the gas station with dozens of other drivers, jockeying for position in line, screaming and threatening each other?

This is one of the reasons I try to keep plenty of everything on hand. When a crisis occurs that forces you into your stockpiles, it’s probably a severe enough crisis that you very much do not want to be at WalMart, the hospital, a gas station, gun store or supermarket. In fact, not only do you not want to be there you would probably be better off not being anywhere close and giving such places a wide berth.

That’s not just good old-fashioned misanthropy talking…it’s fact. Being around a large group of unprepared people, in a crisis, at a location that they deem as having items critical to their well-being, is a recipe for ugliness. Remember the scene in the forgettable remake of War Of The Worlds where Tom Cruise’s character is mobbed by the crowd because he has a working vehicle? It’s like that.

This is something of a staple in survival fiction…at some point a character will go to a hospital, or a military base, or a supermarket, and find it is overflowing with people and the author will then go on to describe the chaos as our character wanders around, surprised at peoples less-than-civilized behavior or at the terrible tragic scene unfolding before them.

First rule of  disaster survival is don’t be there. We know, with utter certainty, that when they predict a hurricane or blizzard there’s going to be a run at the gas station and the supermarket. Why would you go to these chokepoints if you didnt have to? You wouldn’t, right? So it seems it would make sense to have what you need on hand so you don’t need to visit one of these gladiatorial environments. Really, if it was the middle of a disaster, and you had a full tank of gas in your truck, and I said “Hey, wanna go to the gas station and get more gas?” would think that was a good idea? No? So why wouldn’t you take the steps to make sure you don’t have to do that?

Naturally, someone will say that they aren’t worried about it because they’ll wave their Mosin Nagants in the air and send folks running while their alpenflage-clad ‘team members’ go and ‘secure the perimeter’ so they can get what they need without fuss from ‘the sheeple’. You know, that sounds great in an online fiction forum somewhere but wouldn’t it have made more sense while stocking up on the 7.62x54R and surplus East Bloc web gear to just stock up on the other stuff as well so you don’t even have to leave your travel trailer and take those risks? And, yes, there’s risks because even if you and four of your buddies put on your best mall-ninja outfits and head to the WalMart parking lot feeling like the one-eyed man in the world of the blind you are still, most likely, going to find that you weren’t the only one ordering from Century Arms International that year.You don’t really think that in a crisis of that kind of intensity folks are going to leave the house unarmed, do you? Of course not. And it only takes one desperate person with a HiPoint to turn the parking lot into a scene from Heat. So why not avoid the hassle and just stock what you need so you don’t even have to be there?

Hey, don’t get me wrong…theres a time and a place for getting all “Red Dawn” with your buddies, but the parking lot of the local Krogers isnt it.

Two things I saw on the interwebz came to mind recently. The first was a video from a fella who was storing, among his long-term food, cardboard containers of salt. Over time the salt wound up causing damage to nearby cans of food, as the cans rusted from the salt’s corrosive effects.

Over at ,Rawles’ SurvivalBlog there was a link to a commercial package for sealing up your #10 cans of food to help preserve the can from enviromental damage.

Considering the amount of faith, food and expense that we sink into canned goods, it only makes sense to try and preserve the cans from damage. I had a can of food from the LDS cannery that someone gave me a few years back. The entire can was a rough brown color/texture as the material on the exterior of the can had started to oxidize. However, that can had previously been stored in a more humid environment than the arid mountain desert-like environ that is western MT. (I opened the can, because I was curious to see if there had been any damage to the contents….the interior of the can was perfect and shiny but that simply means the decay hadn’t yet advanced enough to eat all the way through the material. What it did mean, though, was that although the exterior of a can may be ugly and look compromised, the contents might be okay…..but why take chances?) I have #10 cans of food in storage that have been there since pre-Y2K and they’re fine. How do I know? Because I inspect stuff.

Every bucket of food, and every box with a six-pack of #10 cans, gets inspected several times a year. Usually twice, sometimes more if I’m bored. An inspection involves opening up the outer packaging, checking the interior contents for leakage, spillage, decay, or other damage. If things check out (and they have so far) things get sealed up again and the box, or the hang tag on the bucket, is stamped with an inspection date.

The very low humidity environment here means that, really, twice a year inspections are plenty for most gear.

How do you preserve a #10 can in an environment that isn’t as friendly as the one I’m in? Well, I have no experience doing it, but I’ve read of a couple options. One method involves melting parafin and either dunking the can in it, or ‘painting’ it onto the bare metal of the can. The waxy coating protects the metal surface from moisture. Obvious drawback is the mess and that you have to remove the labels from the cans.

Any other options? Well, this is speculation, but…… I suppose you could put each can into a vacuum-seal bag, drop in a package of dessicant, and seal it up. That would protect the can from the environment, take care of any moisture in the bag, and it’d be much easier to process than dunking cans in parafin. You’d have to make sure that your storage method for the cans doesn’t tear a hole in the plastic, but otherwise it seems like that would work.

Probably the easiest method is to simply store the cans in a protective enclosure of some kind. Some sort of large airtight, moisture-proof, container. Some surplus ammo cans are large enough to hold a few #10 cans but I haven’t seen very many that would hold a large amount of them. I suppose the creative among us might get a piece of pvc pipe of correct diameter, cut it to length, glue end caps on, stack a half dozen cans inside, add dessicant, seal it up, and stack ‘em somewhere…but that seems mighty bulky.

If rust is the concern, I can see someone thinking it would be a good idea to treat the cans with some sort of metal preserver…. that seems like a bad idea. Contamination to other foodstuffs would be a hazard, and if you used something like coating the metal with a vegetable oil you’d draw vermin/insects.

Fortunately, as I said, in my environ it appears that can degradation due to environmental concerns isn’t much of an issue. A fairly lax schedule of bi- or tri-annual inspections seems to keep me from having any surprises.

I just use a common office-style date-stamper like you’d find at Staples, and either stamp the boxes or, if using buckets, I stamp the hang tags with the inspection dates.  I suppose I could just write it down with a marker or something, but when you’ve got a huge amount of boxes/tags to mark, it’s a lot faster to just rubber-stamp ‘em.

Obviously, the biggest issue affecting storage of these sorts of materials is the environment they’re stored in. If you live in humid environment, or corrosive environment, youre going to have your hands full finding a way to keep things from degrading. My environment is pretty dry, with very little humidity, so I’m not too concerned…but I do take steps to make sure cans aren’t touching each other, kept high enough off the floor to be safe if theres a pipe break or something, and are protected from being banged around. Between that and the occasional inspection I’ve had pretty good results and haven’t had anything exxhibit any obvious signs of oxidation or decay.

Yeah, it’s a pain in the tuchas to sit down and go through boxes and bins every six or nine months, but it’s a bigger pain to find expensive food ruined. I’d rather do the inspections and put up with a little inconvenience than discover during a Very Bad Time that our food that we were counting on has become inedible.

So it’s a quiet evening, the zombies have been stopped at the bridge you and your buddies blew earlier, the looters are all swinging gently in the breeze, the invading horde of UN troops are off looting Disneyland, those annoying neighbors have been Raptured away, the space aliens are busy stealing the entire planets water supply, and now it’s time for dinner. No problem…even though the power went out a month ago, you’ve got plenty of food stored. Tonight, it’s just you for dinner..the rest of your group are off doing their own thing.

You pull a #10 can of food off the shelf, pull the P38 can opener off the lanyard around your neck, and crack open a can of fruit cocktail. Glad you planned ahead right? But…you can only eat about 1/4 of the contents of the can and now, without refrigeration, you’ve got some leftovers on your hands. In the heat this stuff won’t keep long. If it were five for dinner it wouldn’t be a problem, no leftovers…but tonight it’s just you.

And this is where you realize that while stocking up in quantity was a good idea, when you were pushing that shopping cart through CostCo two years ago, maybe saving a few bucks and buying everything in #10 cans may not have been as good an idea as buying the more expensive, but smaller serving, cans.

This crossed my mind the other day as I was making dinner for the wife. Before I go any further, let’s get some terms and definitions going so we can talk intelligently. A “#10 can” is not a “ten-pound can”. (If it we’re, it would be a 10# can, not #10.) “#10″ is an identifier of the size/type of can. Those big cans you see at CostCo? Those are #10 cans…usually used for things like coffee and restaurant-sized portions. The 15~ oz. cans that you and I are familiar with from our usual grocery shopping are, usually, #300 or #303 sized. Here’s a chart listing common various sizes and their identifying nomenclature.

So, as I said, I was cooking dinner for the wife. Two things you should know about her. First, like a hummingbird, she eats small portions but eats often. Second, she’s not a big fan of eating the same thing twice in a row…like it offends the gods or something. As a result, leftovers tend to wind up just sitting in the fridge longer than they should. Now, to be fair, she’s gotten better about eating leftovers but when I cook or prepare food for her I often have to consider these things. As a result, I usually err on the side of preparing slightly less than I think she might want.

So..the other night….pork chops, instant potatoes, some canned corn with butter. Simple and fast meal. Here’s where it starts getting relevant…I have two different size’s of canned corn tucked away. Same brand, same style, just different sizes and packaging. First is the usual #303 can with about 15 oz., the other was a 8.75 oz. in a pull-top can. The smaller can, though more expensive, winds up being the perfect size and results in no leftovers. The larger can, though cheaper, would result in leftovers which, in a situation where one is without refrigeration or other means of food preservation, means that unless they are consumed shortly after opening will wind up being wasted.

Other than price there is another drawback in the example I’m using. The pull-top cans have the lids pre-scored to make them easy to open. It’s another point of failure that is not present in more traditionally sealed cans that require a can opener. Ever have a can of pop or beer that got dinged just the right way and wound up having the prescored area open up? I have…it hasn’t happened often, but it has happened. On the other hand, in cases like this, the worst case scenario is you lose the contents of that one small can which is still less than what you’d lose from a #10 can that you could only eat half of.

So, the point I’m trying to make is that when buying the canned goods it’s important to keep in mind that a #10 can of vanilla pudding is great for when you’ve got six people over for dinner, but a lousy waste of food when it’s just you, a power failure, and eighty degree summer weather. While I do stockpile #10 cans of some things, I tend to stick to mostly the 15 oz. and smaller cans. (Although I do keep some 28 oz. cans for things like tomatoes.)

I’m sure someone will comment and say “No problem, take the left overs and can them in glass jars. You’ve got lids, bands, and jars, right?” Well..yes. But lets examine this. Where is the advantage of a #10 can over an equivalent amount of food in smaller cans? Mostly in price, right? The #10 can is cheaper than a half dozen cans that hold the same amount. What is the actual savings? Depending on the product, about three or four bucks. So, assume that I would need to can half the contents of a #10 can to keep them from going bad. That means I’d need about three or four pint jars, bands, and lids…which is going to wind up being about the same or more expensive than the price difference between the #10 can and the smaller can. (And that doesn’t include time and fuel costs for the canning process.)

I actually came across these tiny cans at WalMart a few months back and although they were more expensive per oz. than the larger cans, the compact size and ‘single serving’ nature of them made me figure I’d try some out. As it turns out, they seem to fit pretty well into my plans. I’d gotten so wrapped up in the notion of bulk sizes and cost/ounce criteria that I had overlooked the ‘convenience’ aspect of not having to deal with leftovers in a crisis. Does this mean Im phasing out all the other sizes of cans? Absolutely not. It just means that this is yet another variable and possibility in putting together a comprehensive food storage stockpile.

Tagged under “food” because…duh!
Tagged under “logistics” because..well…this is what logistics is about.