Suburban Survival Part 3 - Nom Nom Nom

To recap thus far, I've already told you that if your air is fucked, so are you, and that you can slake your thirst by keeping water on hand and recycling rain and river water by filtering and boiling.  That alone would keep you alive, albeit miserable, for about 3 weeks.

 Harry Hamlin - now there's a tall drink of water, am I right girls?

You'll be very, very hungry in a very short while.  Most people can stand a day without eating and just be a little cranky.  Most can even go two days and just be even crankier, irritable, and weak.  Three days, and your pets and loved ones start looking like hamburgers and hot dogs, and after four days you'll pretty much just be fit for laying around and moaning about how much you want a hamburger, which will rapidly increase your chances of those same pets and loved ones turning you into one.

Happily, food in America is cheap, easy to get, and packed with preservatives - there's no need to suffer.  There's no need to even be mildly inconvenienced.  There's no need for you to stop shoveling fat food fatly into your greasy fat maw for even a fat second, you fatty fat fat McFatterton.

The first thing to remember is that you have perfectly good food in your cupboards and refrigerator. When things go downhill, the first thing you should do is have a dinner party.  Seriously - get everything perishable out of your refrigerator and tank up.  Your refrigerator will keep food acceptably cool for about 8 hours with no power if you don't stand there slack-jawed staring at the shelves complaining about how you don't have anything to eat, so for you, 2 hours.   Take out everything you can prepare (remember, you probably have no gas or electricity, so just get rid of anything that isn't ready to eat) and chow down.

After that, think about the food in your cupboards, and don't turn up your nose at the junk - it has calories, and in an emergency, calories are your friend.  I appreciate that you've been trying to slim down and all, but those days are over. 

Same with shaving your bush - I'm sorry, I really am.  Svelte bodies and smooth-shaven privates are for people who live in societies, and society just took the last train to failureville. 

More like HAIRY Hamlin, amirite? 

Remember, when in doubt, throw it out.  You have no electricity, no running water, and no gas.  If something looks fuzzy or smells funky (pic related), get rid of it - even if we get Obamacare, you won't be able to get the stomach pumping required after eating a plate of bad shrimp as all the doctors are going to be the first people devoured by the rampaging zombies.  

The stuff in your fridge and cabinets is going to go fast - you're going to be bored and turn to food for relief, and you're going to have to pre-load your belly for the rough times ahead.  You'll need backups, and this is where a little bit of money and a lot of common sense come in. 

 Tastes as good as it looks.

Thanks to 9-11, the tinfoil hat survival crazy industry has exploded (no pun intended).  Stores like Survival Acres and Survival Center sell big huge kits of emergency rations, and you can even get, no kidding, a survival bucket on Amazon like this one which comes with 90 servings of food plus all sorts of emergency supplies like tools, duct tape, gloves, pots, water, and so on, or this one which boasts an impressive 275 servings of food - buy two and your mama could eat for weeks.  Well, days.  Okay, a day.

Naturally, this food is kind of nasty.  On top of that, much of it is freeze dried, and that means you're going to have to use your precious water to prepare it.  On the plus side, water eaten is water drunk, so you're not wasting it - you'll need to drink less, and so you can still quench your thirst, make your food, and play on your slip-and-slide.  Just to be safe, if your survival food requires you to reconstitute it with water, then double your water supply. 

MRE's are not much better in the taste department, but on the upside most of them are open-and-eat, or they come with their own safe heat source and require nothing external for preparation (because the only thing worse than eating mushy stale vomit is eating cold mushy stale vomit).  On the down side, they do eventually go bad - look at the package, it has an expiration date.  Not only that, but by the time you get it, it's probably already seen a good long life on a supply shelf in Afghanistan.  The MRE's you can buy at the army/navy surplus or on ebay are oftentimes just about expired.

Oh good, Monty Python survived the apocalypse.

While survival rations are fine, there's no substitute for real food - even if it's not that great. Most canned goods officially have a shelf life of one year, and while I cannot in good conscience endorse eating expired food, I do know I myself have never contracted salmonella from an old can of soup.  Of course, I am fucking bulletproof - I've worked in food service on and off for 17 years.  I've worked at taco bell.  If you can get it, I've had it, and the things I can eat without the slightest discomfort would absolutely obliterate your little girly guts.   

Look out for cans that puff outwards - that means botulism, and it is super deadly.  Dented cans are fine so long as they don't leak, and again, when in doubt, throw it out. Fuzz is always a bad sign. 

There are a few other by-and-large immortal foods out there - peanut butter stays good indefinitely, as does honey.  Crackers go stale but are edible long past expiration.  Some things are just stupid to tempt fate with, like mayonnaise, but canned meat like tuna and chicken (and of course, spam) will stay good for a long, long time.  Best of all, these things can all be eaten raw - yes, cold tinned chicken is really gross, but it's high in protein, very cheap, and nobody is going to call you a loony for stockpiling it - just tell curious guests that it was on sale. 

Cake or death?

So here are your options:

Survival bucket:  lots of different kits, most have very long shelf lives, but most require water and a heat source.  

MREs:  Risky, usually almost expired by the time you get them, they do go bad, and they are expensive. 

Immortal Food:  Peanut butter, tinned meat, canned soup, powdered milk, and crackers can all be stored for a long time without going bad (though they may go stale).  Forget the jerky and dried fruits unless you're going to be disciplined about rotating them out every 6 -8 months.  They do in fact go bad, albeit very slowly - jerky and dried fruit only have a long shelf life when you compare them to fresh meat and fresh fruit.  Also, dried food = drink water.  Foods that make you thirsty are not full of win in this scenario.

Whatever you do, one indispensable must-have is vitamin pills.  Most of our vitamins come from fruits and vegetables which will be in short supply after The People's Glorious Revolution.  In this day and age, when you can go to Costco and get a 50-gallon drum of multivitamins for $9.99, there is no reason to catch scurvy.

So just remember:  When in doubt, throw it out;  calories are your friends; stock up on vitamins; don't trust whitey; lord loves a working man; if you get it, go to the doctor and get a shot, it'll clear right up.

If you've exhausted your food supplies, and you still don't have a plan, AND nobody has come to rescue you, it may be time to draw lots to see who gets cannibalized first.  How did you let it come to this, you lazy butter fatty?  You couldn't walk into town to rummage through the charred ruins of the supermarket for a can of Bumble Bee?  You disgust me.  Know what?  You deserve to be dissolved in an atomic fireball.  I don't know why I bother. 

Monday is, as usual, UAFNWFSUTGI, but Tuesday I will pick Suburban Survival back up with one of the most important, and most overlooked, facets of post-plumbing survival. 

Go ahead, guess.  Can you guess?  I bet you can guess.