Monthly Archives: February 2023

Why not those ‘survival food buckets’?

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You’ve seen them at CostCo, Cabela’s, and other venues…and they are relentlessly promoted on talk radio and podcasts….yes, I’m talking about those buckets that supposedly have ‘delicious, nutritious long-life survival food’. Upon examination and testing they usually come up far short on nutrition, are a bit distant from ‘delicious’, but they usually do nail the long-life part. Then again, a rock is also long life so there’s that.

The biggest problem with these buckets or kits is that they provide a false sense of security. They’re marketed to the people who feel the need to ‘do something’ but just want to whip out their credit card, make an online purchase, and check “food” off their survival checklist. I would wager virtually none of them actually read the labels.

What are some of the problems? Well, in my experience, quite a few:

  • Calorie Count
  • Lack of meat
  • Reliance on soups and stews
  • Portions
  • Variety
  • Sodium
  • Price

A few years back, Wise food storage got their cod in the crusher over the calorie count of their bucket of survival food. What they had marketed as a two-week supply was, indeed, a two week supply….if you didnt mind each meal having so few calories that it made POW camp rations look generous.

Succinctly, the amount of calories provided by the food in the bucket did not provide nearly enough of the daily recommended amount of calories for a healthy individual. Couple this with the increased caloric requirements from the stresses involved in whatever disaster you’re experiencing and you wind up on, basically, starvation rations. Say what you will about the USDA ‘recommended daily allowance’ numbers but they at least give us a benchmark to work with. Two thousand calories a day is what they usually recommend and most food bucket kits wind up shorting you on that. So, if you insist on buying one of these turn-key packages, check how many calories per day you’ll get out of it. If it isn’t close to 2000, you might want to explore other options.

One thing you’ll notice very quickly is that most of the meals are of the liquid/’mushy’ variety – soups, stews, pilafs, etc. Basically nothing you need a fork or knife for. Most notably, there is a very pronounced lack of meat. Again, read the labels..often youre not getting Chicken Soup or Chicken and Rice. You’re getting Chicken flavored Soup and Chicken flavored Rice. Meat is expensive and it doesn’t rehydrate well unless its freeze-dried, and freeze drying is an expensive process. As a result, you’ll get more actual meat in one tuna-can-sized can of chicken than you will out of the entire bucket of food.

The majority of the foods you’ll get are soups, stews, oatmeal, pilaf, and anything else that can basically just be mixed with water and served. Soups and stews are filling, yes…but in terms of satisfaction it’s a different story. If you think about it, any meal that says ‘just add water’ is going to be a fork-less meal…oatmeal, rice, soup, stew, cream of wheat, couscous, etc, etc. Some people don’t mind that, but I feel it gets old and makes appetite fatigue set in real quick.

The portions in these things are part of the calorie deficit that seems to plague these packages. After a long day of digging out from the rubble of the tornado, manning roadblocks, moving downed trees, and walking miles with a chainsaw and a drum of gas, the last thing you need is to get a bowl of gruel that barely amounts to more than a few tablespoons yet prides itself as being a ‘hearty’ or ‘generous’ portion. If you’re spending two weeks sitting on your hands in a fallout shelter waiting for the rads to go down, then maybe a coffee mug full of instant oatmeal or soup is enough for a meal. But, odds are you’re going to be doing stuff and you’re going to be doing that stuff in a stressful environment…this is no time for half-rations. Check the portions of whatever product youre buying and ask yourself if you really think eating that portion is enough to keep you going for six or eight hours between meals in a crisis environment.

Appetite fatigue is a real thing. It’s true that when you’re literally starving you’ll eat anything (or anyone), but it’s also true that sometimes the food options are so boring, repetititve, or unappealing that you’d rather not eat if you can avoid it. Thirty days of oatmeal for breakfast, chicken flavored soup for lunch, and beef flavored rice for dinner is going to get old very quickly and you’ll discover that not only are you no longer looking forward to eating, you’re actually kinda turned off at the whole idea. So, the more variety the better.

Sodium is a tricky thing. Most Americans get way too much in their diet. Salt is a big part of storage food and if you look at the nutritional labels on some of these foods you” see that one serving can equal almost 50% of your RDA of salt. Its not a problem for me, but for folks who are watching their salt for whatever reason…well, it might be a big deal.

These pre-packaged buckets seem like a good value but if you can’t stomach the food after two days, or it winds up translating into only a few days worth of calories, then where’s the value?

So whats a person who wants a simple, no-fuss way of checking ’emergency food’ of their list supposed to do? Well, it isn’t exactly hopeless…you just need to be willing to make more of an effort than just buying a plastic tub from some outfit you saw advertised on infowars.com or some similar venue.

The most common refrain in the preparedness community is “Store what you eat, eat what you store.” There’s a lot of truth in that but it isn’t that easy. You need to store what you eat that will store well. That means you have to determine what you think is the window for ‘long term’…is it a year? Two years? Five? You have to think about it because whatever that threshold is, it means you’ll have to use or replace your stuff at that point.

These buckets seem like a good value when you think “price divided by number of meals”, but when you read the label of what you’re getting (or not getting) in each meal, the ‘value’ quickly diminishes. 

Is there a a use for these prepackaged food buckets? Probably. They are better than nothing, there’s no two ways about that. And they might be nice as a supplement to an already existing supply of ‘real food’. Or they could be a ‘last ditch’ sort of thing you hide under the floorboards at dad’s cabin. But the sober truth is that when your options have dwindled to the point that you are digging into your ’emergency food supply’ your life has hit the stage where the last thing you need is substandard nutrition and a calorie deficit.

If you want a ‘bucket of emergency food’ go get yourself a good five gallon bucket, lid, and a rubber mallet. Fill that bucket with canned chicken/beef, canned soup, instant soup, instant rice, canned fruit, instant potatoes, instant oatmeal, canned pasta, bouillon powder, freeze dried entrees, MRE entrees, etc, etc.  Drop in an esbit stove, some matches, a canteen cup, and some plastic utensils.. Then hammer a lid on the bucket and know that you put together something a good bit better than what some ‘patriot’ was shilling on AM radio.

Be adventurous…be curious. Think what you want your post-apocalyptic meal to look like and then go wander the aisles at Kroger. Look at whats available in pouches and cans. Think what you can do with those food items, how you could combine them, what meal options they offer. Buy some, go home, and try making a meal. Theory is great, practice is better. Grab a canteen cup, a P38, a spork, and see what you can cook over an esbit stove.

At one end of the spectrum is a basement full of expensive-but-delicious freeze dried entrees, at the other end are 2-liter pop bottle filled with rice and beans. It’s in that area between the two where most of us will be, I think. Those pre-packaged food buckets are in that spectrum but they aren’t where I want to be. For me and mine, it’ll be a mix of all of that – FD entrees, bulk food, canned food, pouch food, etc. And, yes, some self-made ‘just in case’ grab-n-go food parcels. There’s not going to be any awards issued after the apocalypse for the person who made it through on the cheapest, least amount of food. Food is far too serious a subject to be dismissed with a credit card and a plastic bucket of potato granules and chicken flavored rice from CostCo.

Eliminating risk

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Last night was bone-chillingly cold and was accompanied by winds that cut through you like a laser beam. As the expression goes, t’was a night not fit for man nor beast. And what is the one thing that most often would make someone venture out onto the two-lane skating rink? Food. And this is why storing food is, to me, more paramount than almost anything else.

Guns are the super sexy part of survivalism. They are, often, the first thing that a freshly-minted survivalist starts stockpiling. And, sadly, it is often the thing that captures the most resources, attention, and time…often to the detriment of the more mundane things.

There’s no two ways about it, guns (and their attendant accessories) are quite important. But part of the focus of survivalism is…surviving. If I have plenty of food on hand, I don’t have to go anywhere. I don’t have to leave the relative safety of my house. I can stay behind my locked doors, in my heated home, and let the world go by.

Now, you could argue that, if you have the guns then you don’t need to worry about your safety when you leave your house to get food. This is an interesting argument, but it doesn’t pass the smell test. Going out to get food while heavily armed is probably safer than doing that same thing while unarmed. But you know what’s safer than that? Not having to go out at all. By eliminating the need to go out for food you eliminate the risks incurred by ‘going outside your wire’.

There is, of course, risk to staying home as well. However, that’s the same risk regardless of whether you are armed or not. Obviously, the best situation is to be well-stocked with food so that you don’t have to leave your secure area, and then to be armed so you have the ability to defend your secure area.

Nine times out of ten, stored food will be more useful than stored ammo. But, its because of that 10% that we keep the ammo and guns onhand.

Regardless, it’s minus something outside right now and I don’t have to get into a cold truck, risk icy roads, walk across slippery parking lots, ad just in general experience miserable cold….because I have a kitchen and storage area full of food.

So..yay me.

Lather, rinse, reload

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Because.

Actually, this time I had a fairly legitimate reason. I have decided that I need the oft-ridiculed “bathroom gun” and I needed something that would be largely impervious to the moisture encountered in a bathroom environment.

Prices on these things are getting a little higher (but, hey, the prices of everything are getting a little higher these days. Thanks Brandon!) but I still managed to nick this one for about $200. And, as I’ve said, for $200 you can’t really do much better unless you find some weird mislabelled Glock or SIG on Gunbroker.

Only drawback to this particular boomtoy is that the vendor shipped it with a .40 magazine instead of a 9mm magazine. Fortunately I have an ammo can full of Ruger 9mm mags so it isn’t a hardship.

These things really are unspoken heroes in terms of utility. Theyre a bit chunky, and they won’t impress your friends at the range, but I have yet to even hear of one breaking, they’ve been utterly reliable, and for the price they are basically disposable. As a truck/cabin/cache gun, these things are hard to beat.

Breakfast

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I’m actually a fairly open-minded individual. I know that the impression of most survivalists is that we are a bunch of Bible-thumping, gun-humping, right-wing reactionaries who are the enemy of all things ‘non-traditional’. Not so for me. I may not agree with something but…you do you, man.

However…

I absolutely abhor fusion cuisine. Taking one particular genre/species/school of food and combing it with another is… wrong. Example: Taco pizza. Look, either you go eat a taco or you order a pizza. You don’t mix them together. It’s just…..no. Mexican stir-fry? Egg foo omelette? Ranch dressing on pizza? Egg sandwich between two donuts? No, no, no.

But…once in a while…I sin against the culinary gods. Todays affront: the breakfast burrito.

As a survivalist I am all about a couple tings when it comes to food: portability, shelf-life, and quantity. And, as much as I hate to drift into mixing cuisines, the breakfast burrito is handy. It’s a hearty traditional breakfast that requires no tableware, can be rolled up in some aluminum foil and tucked in a pocket, and carries a powerful caloric/carbohydrate punch.

Todays dietary deviance utilized long-term stores just to see what would happen:

We have some dehydrated eggs from CostCo, the survivalist staple of canned bacon, some instant hash browns, some freeze dried cheese blend, and, of course, tortillas. Now, the tortillas were not out of long-term. But, to be fair, I have drums of corn and flour, a grain mill, and some cast iron – so I could make tortillas from scratch using my long-term grain if I had to.

Eggs cooked up just fine, bacon spent some time in a pan to get the fat melted and mixed with the rehydrated hashbrowns. Mix in some cheese and wrap it up in a tortilla:

Probably its most redeeming feature: wrapped in aluminum foil you can shove this in a pocket or mag pouch and eat it later in the day with no muss or fuss.

Results were yummy, but could have benefited probably from a sharper cheese. Some salsa (theres that stupid fusion thing) would also have been nice. And, I do keep salsa on the shelf in storage, but didnt feel like cracking it open. As an aside, given the ingredients in salsa, you can source the individual freeze dried ingredients and make your own instant salsa blend.

Breakfast is the one meal that, after the apocalypse, will be actually better than what i eat now. For some reason, all the things you’d do for breakfast seem to have long-term storage options that lend them quite well to the survivalist pantry. I’ve posted about it before, but a post-apocalyptic breakfast menu would actually better than what I eat now. Go figure.

More of the same

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Man, it’s just a fascinating world that we live in thee days, innit? I mean, we wind up living in/through a pandemic which pretty much no one (well, except the Chinese) saw coming. Then we get inflation that hasn’t been seen in a generation (thanks Brandon!), and now we’re shooting UFO’s out of the sky like it’s a Space Invaders tournament. I have no idea what sort of Black Swan could possibly be next…I mean, who would have thought any of these most recent crises were even plausible?

Remember: while we cannot control the things that are out of our control, we can control our responses to them. I can’t control the idiots in Washington driving the economy into a ditch, but I can control my response to that. And I do. My response is the same as my response to most thing out of my control – set things up so that I can at least exert a little bit of control over the consequences.

Right now my biggest concern is positioning myself to take advantage of the decline in the housing market as rates go up, qualified buyers go down, and the resultant decline in prices. Somewhere out there is a piece of property that is exactly what I’m looking for and it’s previous owner is slashing the price to make a sale. Of course, buying the property is only the beginning of the financial journey – once it’s done, then comes the building and improvements. A chunk of nowhere is nice. A chunk of nowhere with a comfy, cozy, hardened little house on it is better.

Although my biggest concern at the moment is, as I said, getting my ducks in a row to purchase some property, there’s still that little bugaboo of being ready for everything else that could go wrong. For 90% of the problems, the quick fix is cash. Water heaters, transmissions, broken teeth, family emergencies, layoffs, and a host of other personal EOTWAWKI’s are fixed with a generous application of greenbacks. And for what the greenbacks don’t fixe, there’s food, fuel, amo, guns, meds, clothes, and a zillion other things to help take the sting out of whatever crisis is coming down the pike.

Still, you can never know whats gonna happen…(pandemic? Who had that one on their scorecard?) So, I keep doing what I’ve always been doing … stock up, have extra, be ready to shift gears on a moments notice, etc, etc.

Not an inexpensive way to live, unfortunately, but dirt cheap compared to the costs of being unprepared.

MKE MP5 Mags

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Deciding that, while plastic mags seem to be doing okay, it might be nice to have some durable metal magazines for the HK94/MP5 series of firearms I own, I ordered up a six-pack of MKE brand metal MP5 mags.

Results were mixed. The mags functioned fine in two guns, but in the MP5k-style gun the recoil of each shot would displace the magazine in the well and the mag would not be locked in place, thus resulting in failures to feed. Since the mags worked okay in the other guns, and the plastic mags worked fine, I’m suspecting that the mag catch on this particular gun is not ‘pushing inwards’ all the way to securely engage the magazine notch. Not sure if its a part that can be adjusted, as on an AR, or what. I need to experiment a bit.

For the record, the Unity-AC and ETS plastic mags have worked fine across the board..Because these are metal mags, and the area for the magazine catch to engage is pressed into the metal rather than milled out as on the pastic mags, perhaps the recess is not as deep as it could be. But…that didnt seem to matter in the other two guns…so Im guessing its the magazine catch. Fortunately, if thats the case, it could be as simple a fix as replacing the magazine catch. Need to play with it some more.

One of the nice things about having guns that are identical is that when it comes to testing things out, having a sample size of more than one is very handy for eliminating variables.

I’m going to go ahead and say the MKE mags were worth it since they appear to work just fine in my other two guns and its only these mags, in one particular gun, that is giving me a problem. Im pretty confident the problem is the magazine catch and I’ll probably head over to HKParts and order a replacement.

Balloonatics

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Ugh…long week.

One of the more notable events this week was the Chinese taking an aerial tour of Montana, and our missile fields, with a rather large balloon.

The interesting thing about the Chinese is that they think long-term. In this country, and many Western ones, we make policy and plans that are, perhaps, one or two political terms in the future. For example, we have a four-year term for president, so a lot of plans are on a four or eight year timetable. The Chinese don’t limit themselves like that. They plan for fifty years, or more, out there.

This is most evident in their Belt And Road Initiative to create streamlined lines of travel for commerce (and, no doubt, military equipment) across a good chunk of Asia and into Europe.

Africa is a special case to the Chinese. They’ve been investing heavily in infrastructure projects…building massive airports in tiny countries that never see a 747 but will see plenty of Chinese military transports. Large swaths of land are leased or purchased by China for their ‘food security’ program. It’s only a matter of time before, at some point, they decide to ‘take Africa private’ and simply nudge out the local governments and install their own

Long before that happens, though, China will flex it’s biggest muscle – its economic one. When your economy is dependent on Chinese goods and Chinese debt purchases, you’ve gone from being equals to being beholding to a patron.

Of course, things might be different with the whole Russian situation these days. The Russians and the Chinese had a big dustup about 60 years ago in a case of ‘my Communism is better than your Communism’ and it looked like the two of them might start lobbing canned sunshine at each other.

The Russians kicking of a war in Europe would, no doubt, put a crimp in those Chinese plans for economic domination although I’ve no doubt they have various contingency plans to make such an event work for them.

And, of course, lets not forget these are the same folks that let loose a virus that killed a buncha people and they have yet to have their feet held to the fire about it.

So that ballon episode? Thats just a visible part of China’s plan to get its Peking ducks in a row for when it decides to really start applying the pressure to the international, and American, community.

The Century-Long Evolution of the U.S. Army Helmet

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Although soldiers have been wearing head protection since at least the 26th century BCE, the modern military helmet is a fully 20th century invention.

And it’s been a rapid evolution. Growing from its WWI origins, the standard issue Army helmet has transformed from a simple ‘tin hat’ into an impenetrable shell that can shrug off high-velocity bullets. What was once a simple piece of steel is now fabricated from space-age composites that can stop a AK47 round dead in its tracks.

Now, more than a century after the first U.S. Army helmet was introduced, the Army’s Program Executive Office for Soldier Protection and Individual Equipment is reimagining the helmet into a piece of gear more fitting today’s battlefield.

An interesting question that, I think, will have two very distinct camps of supporters and not a lot of middle ground: does a survivalist need a military-style helmet?

We’ve seen the ‘high speed, low drag operators’ running around in their bump helmets. These helmets are more for protecting your noggin from banging against doorways, window frames, the inside of an MRAP, etc, etc, rather than offering ballistic protection. In fact, as I read it, skateboard helmets were sometimes pressed into duty before the military was fully on board with the bump helmet.

But we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about the modern(ish) PASGT that we see frequently at gun shows and the like. Does a survivalist need one of those? Or is wearing one just a form of LARPing?

Well, to be fair, they’re a great place to mount your flip-down night vision. But, how many of us can afford to have a sweet set of NODs? So if you don’thave a need for a helmet-mounted piece of gear, do you need a helmet?

I think that in most crises your probably going to need a protective helmet to spare you the head injuries from debris, tree limbs, falling glass, etc, etc, more than you will need the ballistic protection from incoming rifle fire. (And I’d put the need for protection from shell fragments at near-zero.)

On the other hand, some folks figure that if youre going to be wearing body armour why wouldn’t you extend that level of protection to your brainpan? If you’re doing the Roof Korean thing, don’t you want as much protection as possible? Good argument there.

I’ll admit that, tucked away in the bunker, there’s a PASGT sitting there that I picked up years ago. I know it fits, but other than that I have never worn it. But, for some reason, I like knowing I have it. If I had to run out the door to stem the horde of zombies would I grab it? I’m really not sure. But I like having that option.

What about you? Does a helmet have a place in your preps? Military helmet or construction/debris helmet?

MKE MP5 Mags

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I have…a few….MP5 clones sitting around here. What I don’t have are genuine HK mags. ANd, thats a little understandable since the bloody things are around $75+ ea. And, for reasons known only to Crom, the fine folks at Magpul don’t make any MP5 sticks. (Although they do get points for making a drum.)

Alternatives? ETS makes ’em. And the former Yugoslavia has the “AC Unity” brand whcih is suddenly everywhere in the wholesale world. Prices are around $20 a mag, which is reasonable, and they seem to work okay although some can be a bit snug.

MKE makes MP5 clones and they sell metal mags. The MKE metal sticks have a seemingly good rep, and although I’ve found the plastic mags to be OK, I’d rather travel the apocalypse with something a bit more hardy. So, I ordered up a half dozen from Atlantic Firearms and will let you know how they perform.

And, dang it, at some point I’m going to have to grit my teeth and buy a half dozen genuine HK mags. But, lordy, thats some expensive happysticks.