The Emergency Essentials Food Storage Analyzer Reviewed

Ok, so I must admit that I only looked at the analyzer after seeing it on their newsletter and seeing the "Sign up for a gift card" thinggie on there.  Basically, the analyzer is a web based program that, after you create an account and tell it some info is able to tell you about the "State of Affairs" in your pantry.  Specifically, the nutrition available, days of food, and some of the more important Recommended Daily Allowances for some Vitamins and Macro Nutrients. 

The Basics
First, you create an account and then enter the analyzer site.  From there you enter the demographics of your family.  The program then tells you basically how much calories you should allot for each member of your family.  (Remember, for those of us who are more practical than blind by what THEY recommend, if things are really THAT bad then caloric expenditures will surely be WAY off, but that's for another time.)  Anywho, You then go to the analyzer and enter all your stored foods into the program.  I entered just the number 10 cans that I have, and guessed, being conservative (duh) and came up with roughly 58 days of stored dried food for the 4 of us.

The good of the program
The program has a great search feature that never failed to find what I was looking for, with the exception of Coconut oil.  (For my money and my preps, it stores longer and is overall more healthy that their only Oil entry, good ol' veggie oil.  Remember folks, fats are an important macro nutrient.  Maybe more so than we are led to believe. The hard part about them is that they spoil relatively fast.)  The printer friendly list available is very nice as well.  I could see entering a 1 for everything you know you have, printing off the list, then going to your pantry and doing a more thorough count then coming back and fixing your levels.  The program even allows you to put together an order and see ultimately how what you ordered helps up the days of food storage you have. The fact that you can add items whether they are in  #10 cans, 41 pound super pails and other various measurements made things easier as well.

The bad of the program
So I had entered most of my list by searching for an item and adding it, then on to the next item.  I hit calculate and it said, 3.81 days.  WTF??  67 freaking #10 cans and all it was was 3 days, Does mason get 8500 calories per day for a growing kid?  then I noticed that in the RDA portion, I saw that all was listed was 6 cans of pinto beans.  Good to know that there are enough calories in 6 cans of them to get us a few days.  The thing is, you have to enter your item amount and then hit calculate before you go onto the next item.  It doesn't calculate every time you enter something.  It's not a big deal, but I had to go back and re-enter everything.

CH-ch-ch-changes?
The only thing I would change is something to do with an auto update feature, or maybe atleast a reminder to hit calculate after every item entered.  Oh, and add coconut oil...

The Food Storage Analyzer seems to be a great program, and something that I can see most folks utilizing, no matter their level of preparedness experience.  Those with more preparedness experience can have an easy to read one stop order platform, and those with less experience can use it as a great starting off point and something to accurately judge their preps. 

Jim

Water water every where but where you need it...

"You know class, Human beings are made of 90% water..."  We've all heard it before.  The big three in survival are Food, Shelter, and Water.  I like what Cody Lundin has to say about survival situations and preparedness.  His take is that it's all about keeping your core body temperature at 98.6 degrees.  No shelter, you can over heat, or freeze.  No food, you can't keep the metabolic fires going.  No water, you can't keep cool.
I think that most folks think that in prepping, food is the main concern.  People can go quite a ways with out food, some like me more than others (see future post on getting healthy as a prep).  But food is comfort.  Food is what our mom gave us to shut us up, it's what we have with friends to celebrate joyous occasions, and going without it makes out tummys hurt. It's cool to look at your pantry and see stacks of food.  Row after row of steel canned goodness just waiting to be freed of it's hermetically sealed confines... Mmmmm.
Water on the other hand is so boring that there is a whole section in the grocery store devoted to putting crap into it to make it palatable. Now, go back to your acres of cans in the pantry and find all your water.  One case of bottles, maybe 2.  20 ounces per bottle, times say, 48 bottles max, that's like
7.5 gallons.  If those are 16 oz bottles it's 6 gallons.  Several things I have read have mentioned that for preparedness reasons, folks should store around a gallon to 1.5 gallons per person per day that they are expecting to prepare for.  Think about that for a second.  I'll do the math for my little family. 4 people, times 1 gallon, times 3 week crisis.  84-126 gallons.  Personally, I'd like to be ready for 3 months at least, so that would be more like 270-540.  Also, personally, I think that in the supper, I KNOW i can drink a gallon of water, and if I am doing hard labor gardening or what have you, I will. So maybe up that to 2 gallons per person.  720 gallons.  Wow, that's the first time I have figured that out myself.  Talk about an imposing number.  Even just looking at the sheer weight of that, according to the british ditty, "...a pint a pound the world around..." means 8 pounds per gallon so that would be between 2160 and 5760 pounds of water.  Awesome.  Now, where to store it...

There are many many products out there that can be used for water storage.  The following sites have some good water related guidelines for the storage and treatment of water for emergency situations.  Basically, according to FEMA you can use household chlorine bleach at 16 drops 1/8 teaspoon per gallon.  If you trust the EPA more than FEMA then you can use only 8 drops, but then they go on to say that 8 drops is approx 1/8 a teaspoon.  So, toss the dropper and go for the teaspoon.  Or for you nurses out there, 1/8 of a teaspoon converts to .62ml.  You then must let it sit for approx 30 mins.  Particulates must be filtered out to make the water safe otherwise they interfere with the chlorine. 

One thing to remember, chlorine does have a shelf life as apparently the dissolved chlorine off gasses from the solution and eventually lowers the concentration.  I have a bag of pool shock that is granular calcium hypochlorite.  Taken directly from the EPS website:
"You can use granular calcium hypochlorite to disinfect water.
Add and dissolve one heaping teaspoon of high-test granular calcium hypochlorite (approximately ¼ ounce) for each two gallons of water, or 5 milliliters (approximately 7 grams) per 7.5 liters of water. The mixture will produce a stock chlorine solution of approximately 500 milligrams per liter, since the calcium hypochlorite has available chlorine equal to 70 percent of its weight. To disinfect water, add the chlorine solution in the ratio of one part of chlorine solution to each 100 parts of water to be treated. This is roughly equal to adding 1 pint (16 ounces) of stock chlorine to each 12.5 gallons of water or (approximately ½ liter to 50 liters of water) to be disinfected. To remove any objectionable chlorine odor, aerate the disinfected water by pouring it back and forth from one clean container to another."

Ultimately there's lots of math there, but also lots of info too.  From what I have read, the granular calcium hypochlorite does not have a shelf life as it does not off gas.  I cannot point to a single reference to that right now, so follow my advice at your peril.  Or thank me, your call.

So we need to have alot of water on hand, we get that.. Now, how to store it...  See that big hole over there, that's the hole in my preps showing it's ugly head.  Sure, you have 55 or so gallons in your hot water tank, and another 5 or 10 in the pipes in your house, and given enough warning ahead of time and a bath tub you have 60+ gallons there too.  All that however ain't 5-700 gallons.  Incidentally if you have a pool or spa, that water is questionable at best.  Bromine, fungicide, clarifier... all that crap is a chemistry lesson waiting to happen is used for long term.  I bet you could filter most of that crap out if you ahd a big sack of carbon lying around, or at least some from a fire.  The short answer is that if it were me, hell yes I'd use it, but I would also be thinking about the chemicals I put into it in the first place, or at least how to get them out.  But I don't have a pool, nor a spa...  So there we are, looking into the deep dark places of the interwebs at the multitude of storage options. 

First thing's first.  Provided your water source uses chlorination, you can pour it into a food safe, sealed container, keep it in a cool dark place, and you are good.  If it doesn't, add chlorine per the directions above to get a faintly chlorine smell, and the proceed as normal.  As for containers, Food safe is the first thing you should look for.  At least for a few look for portability.  Sure those food grade 55 gal drums are cool, but try hauling a full one from down by the river.  Food safe 5 gal buckets are likely just about the optimal size in that regard.  I have read about some folks using 2L bottles.  Buy your kids 2L's of pop (Sugar free, non-caffeinated of course) and keep the bottles.  Wash and rinse them and you should be good to go.  They are good because they are crazy durable and are small enough to be stashed everywhere.  You will likely get a post pop funk to your water supply, but hey, who's complainin when everyone else has mud puddle flavored water.  Another entry into the scavenged water container category that most folks don;t think of is Boxed wine.  Mmm  Again, those crazy Mylar lined bags are fairly durable, and come in a handy box provided you don't destroy it while gutting it.  I'm not sure where I will be headed, storage wise.  I have heard about large 130 gallon containers that take up roughly the same footprint of 55 gal ones but are taller.  They are kind of spendy, but pack a lot of utility for the punch.  A huge cistern would be kinda cool, but where to put it...  I imagine if you found a supplier of 5 gallon buckets that were food safe (not all plastic buckets are food safe.  During the manufacturing process, companies use different chemicals to release the plastic from the form.  just because the plastic is the same, doesn't mean that the release agent hasn't leached into the plastic, just waiting to give you a third kidney, or take half of one of the ones you have) and cheap you could stack those to the ceiling and not give it a second thought.

As for using your stored water, first, rotate it when you change your clocks back (this should be also when you change the batteries in all battery powered equipment so they don't corrode as well as put fresh ones into the smoke detectors.)  If you have to use it, it WILL taste funky.  Try an experiment.  Leave a glass of water on the counter overnight.  Taste it in the morning.  It will be "funky".  As I understand it, many of the dissolved gasses we are accustomed to tasting are offgassed during the night.  Take your glass of funky water and pour it back and forth into another container 5 or 6 times.  Try it again.  Simple as that.

Another bit of water trivia.  If you use iodine to purify your water, either tincture or povodone (roughly 10 drops per gallon with povodine and 20 drops per gallon for the tincture), it will taste like the inside of your medicine cabnet afterwards... Unless you dissolve a vitamin C tablet into it.  Ok, now for a touch of chemestry.  That asorbic acid interferes with the action of the iodine in the water, canceling out both the taste AND the flavor.  This is something you don't want to use right away, as the water has not had a chance to become purified, so wait about 30-60 mins (Depending on what you read).  Also, asorbic acid is asorbic acid, so I imagine that lemon or lime juice would work, as would asorbic acid from the health food store that is usually used to retain color during dehydration and other types of food preservation.

Here is a list of websites that have TONS of info regarding water disinfection.

FEMA
Get Ready Gear (simple to read form)
Red Cross
Clorox
EPA

This was a heavy post, but hopefully can become a bit of a resource for some of you out there.

(insert catchy catch phrase here)
jim

Here's to hoping...

Apparently Blogger had some problems with their system and had to back up the blogger system a couple days.  Of course, I had posted a review of Emergency Essential's Food Prep Analyzer thing, and now it's gone.  I do hope things get back to normal, or I'll have to write that again.  Not that it was a tough review, the thing kicks ass, it's just the time involved.

jim

What it's all about... or Why prep in the first place

So just what is all this about prepping anyways?  If I were to describe it to most folks, the images it would conjure up would be very reminiscent of those you would get if you were to use the word survivalist, or Y2Ker.  There is generally more and less to it that. 

Why?
There are a few reasons I think people should be prepared. 

The Government says we should. 
I give you: Ready.gov  There, nuff said.  Roll Credits. 

Alright, they are not perfect, but they do make some good points. We'll relabel this point:

DISASTER PREPAREDNESS. 
It's hard to not trust the Government and the almost mystical ease with which they handled the Superdome.  What?  You mean that wasn't supposed to happen that way?  Oh.  Ready.gov says you should have around 72 hours worth of food and water stashed because you could wait that long to receive help from the government while they establish emergency shelters where it's easier to help large numbers of people in ONE PLACE.  Incidentally, that'll be their first priority.  Think about THAT.  What's easier?  Saying, "Hey come to Safeco Field and get water and food." Or making house calls?  At it's most basic, being prepared allows you to live with relative freedom and not NEED to rely on the government for a short term.  (I"ll go into the what's and how longs another time.)

The Unemployment line
Enough doom and gloom for a second.  What happens if you lose your job.  What's that?  That's doomy and gloomy?  Oh, I guess I lied.  Here's more doom and gloom to ponder then.  The unemployment line.  I hope that most of you have not had to see that it's not actually a line.  At least I didn't see one.  There was a line of people, but I  was looking for paint.  Financial stability is the ultimate Prep.  If you have a bit of cash stashed then you are insulated from emergencies, such as not being able to stash more cash away.  Financial stability is important, just ask anyone that has been to a Dave Ramsey class (His Home Page).  He has good info, and I'll get into the basics of financially preparing in a while, as I learn more about it myself.  Basics though:  Debt: Bad.  Planning: Good.

Cash Money
Ok, for real, no more doom and gloom this time.  Money.  We all like it.  Some more than others, but by and large, we all need it.  It's all about commodities this time.  If you put food away, it's an investment in the future.  Not a matter of if you will be hungry, just a matter of when.  I just found THIS webpage (Foodtimeline.org) that tells an interesting story.   A story about corn flakes.  That oh so yummy food dreamed up by Dr Kellog that according to Wikipedia "...would have an anaphrodisiac property and lower the sex drive."  Mmm breakfast of celibacy.  Anyways... If you look at the table on that other page for a second... Ok, back?  Good.  In the year of my birth, 1975, a 12 oz box of corn flakes cost $0.45 or $0.04 per ounce.  By 1985 the price per ounce had jumped by 50% to $.06.  When I graduated High School in 1994, Corn Flakes were $.09.  Supposedly today, the price per 12 oz box is #3.70, or $0.31 per ounce.  So imagine if you will that Corn flakes have a shelf life of over 35 years and what if you put 1000 ounces of corn flakes away in 1975, costing you $40 bucks.  You would today have $310 in crunchy gold libido crushing breakfast goodness.  This is just one example.  With gas prices being what they are and what they will be, I can imagine seeing the prices of a lot of stuff becoming more expensive.  Those near insane creatures, the extreme cuponers don't sound so insane do they.  We could learn a lot from them really.  You may not need 4800 tooth brushes, but if the sh-tuff hits the fan, someone may need a tooth brush more than they need a few dozen tomatoes or 400 pounds of zucchini.  Barter will be alive and well.  Long and short of it:  Stash food that will store for a long time at cheap prices now and avoid getting the screws put to ya when Diesel is at $8.50 and that roll of Charmin costs $12.  (incidentally, think about all the jokes about Russian toilet paper during the cold war.  Tell someone used to it that Toilet paper is not a commodity.  Hank Hardass may tell you to go to hell when you offer to trade him a roll of toilet paper for a few chicks, but Harriet Hardass will change his mind.)

Why I prepare:
 I imagine if I sat down on a leather couch some where next to a guy with a suit jacket, yellow legal pad, and $50 pen I'd likely point to my youth as being the starting point.  We grew up surrounded by love and thinking that mac and cheese made from powdered milk and Government cheese was the best thing on earth;  add some Vienna sausages and it's heaven on a plate.  Then things got good, as they sometimes do, and we were living the typical middle class lifestyle.  Then things got bad again, as they sometimes do,  just as I graduated and my family had some financial troubles.  They moved out of state, meanwhile I eeked out a living by my self for a while.  Then thanks to friends and great bosses, I was given some great opportunities.  I flourished, and made the most of it.  Then my wife blessed me with a son, and things in my mind started to change a bit.  Then a daughter, and they changed a bit more.  I saw what my folks went through and was determined to not have that happen again.  It has become somewhat of a fixation for me.  It wasn't global destabilization of the dollar, Peak Oil, Y2K (though I did walk around that night with a pistol on my hip going from party to party), the avian flu, or the war on terror that made me look at prepping.  It was a need to provide for my family no matter what.  I never want to look at my hungry son and daughter and say, "Sorry kids, nothing today".  Just typing that is hard. 
Now, don't misunderstand, we never went without as kids.  In fact we never knew that we were poor.  I just can't imagine the stress my folks were under.  Deep down I know that my preps are but a small insulation from the bitter cold of reality, but it's something.  And like my folks I want for my kids to never know what being without is.

 Brass Tacks:
Here's something you will hear me say with some regularity:  Being prepared is all about you being able to maintain independence from the very infrastructures in place that you have come to rely on when things are bad for any number of reasons.  I just came up with that, and it sounds pretty good I think.  But that's what's it's all about.  You being able to be the head of the household, instead of the Nanny state getting to you whenever they can get to you. 
One of my biggest influences, Jack Spirko of The Survival Podcast, says a couple things that I would like to quote.  First, "Tenet one is simple, everything you do should improve your lifestyle even if nothing ever goes wrong, while ensuring your sustainability if something does go wrong."  The second one should make die-hard Dave Ramsey-er's smile: "Debt is Cancer."  Simple and straight to the point. 
Being prepared means having that which you need, even if you don't need it yet.  Everyone will have their own version of how much is enough, what to prepare for, how to prepare, even whether to prepare at all.  We'll go over that in the future.   Until then, work on that debt, and try to think about what it is that makes you want to prepare.  Our Grandparents did it.  It got them through the great depression and a couple of wars.  What will we have to prepare for?

-jim

The Hidden benefits of all those feel good walk fundraisers

So yeah, it's good for the Babies, Cancer Patients, Homeless, underprivileged, over-privileged, Dogs, Canaries and even the (insert feel good demographic here).  OK, that sounds a little coarse, but it's true.  It is good for them.  It is good to help those you can when you can.  Things like that are good for the community and good for you to help your kids understand why you donate and or do the walks.  It helps build in them the character that you want to see developed.  Secertly though, walking those 6 or so miles can be used as a test run for bugging out on foot, especially in those households that contain a bit of resistance for training or practicing.  For the guys, you look like one of those Oprah Winfrey types when you say you want to help the babies with an "oh and by the way, we could also be doing a practice bug out at the same time" if she's down with the prepping thing.  When the gals out there bring up going to one of these things, saying "but honeykins, it'll be a good chance for us to get out and do something physical" if he doesn't get it, might work.   While adding "besides we can grab the bug out stuff and see how tough a short bug out would really be" would gain you some monster brownie points if he does. 

Let me 'splain further.  When was the last time you were able to get the family to agree to walk 6 miles for no good reason.  There is a reason that these walks are in this format.  By doing so, people think they are doing this great thing, sharing in the burden of what ever is being supported if you will.  Standing up and saying, "see, I do care, I just walked 6 miles, AND I collected $87.50 to give.  It's cool.  And it's a way to see just how bad it sucks to hump that 65 pound bug out bag 6 miles on foot.  Can you say, "Man I need a lighter sleeping bag"?

I haven't talked about Bug out Bags yet, I know.  Hell, I haven't talked about much yet...

Bug out bag quickie:
Bug out bags have been called many things.  Go-Bags, Get Out Of Dodge (GOOD) Bags, and many more names that I won't waste my time on.  They are a way for you to have enough crap to survive for 3 days in the most basic way possible.  In another post I will go over the thinking of what should be in them and why.  For now though, I'll just say that they should cover the three basics (Food, Water, Shelter) with a few extras to cover you and your family for 3 days.  Every person should have their ow, but families like mine with a toddler, and school age kid that is a dream.  Sorry dad, but yer pack is going to weigh 4 tons. 

Back to the walks:
These walks are usually on trails or city streets.  It's a bug out best case scenario.  Nice terrain, no time limit, no bad guys chasing you with dogs and nary a Zombie in sight.  One other thing a bug out bag should be is discreet.  If you do need to jet the city for places unknown, you don't want to be walking through through a town you have never been to looking like you just carjacked some military patrol making off with the baddest ass piece of milspec gear.  Long story short, if during your walk, someone says, "Wow, what unit are you in?"  you are probably doing it wrong, and attracting too much attention. 

You will also see what how bad your choice of foot wear sucks.  I recently did the Walk for Babies.  6 miles and all of it in my new Vibram 5-toe-shoes.  Great running and martial arts shoes.  Shitty walking shoes, at least for me.  Initially, my feet felt fine, yet at mile marker 4 they started to ache.  By 6 i knew I was in for it the next day.  Strangely, this pain was alleviated when I ran to the finish when my son challenged me to a race.  And lo, the pain returned when I returned to walking pace.  Bugging out is no place to find out that your new $300 pair of Asolos give you blisters, or your $100 fancy toe shoes may not be good for forced marches. So dress rehearse with a good walk. 

Loaded down with water, good shoes, and your bug out bags; have fun.  Enjoy the walk, but don't forget your ulterior motive.  Think a bit while you are alone with your thoughts.  Are these shoes ok for this hike?  Would they be ok if I had to do this all day?  Would my family be ok?  When did the whining start?  Was it wife whining, or kid whining?  How could that be alleviated?  More breaks, or more fun, more food, more water?  How's the gear holding up?  Am I too cold or warm?  Is the bag too heavy?  Could it be heavier?  All of these are great questions to ask yourself.  I imagine there's more, but that'll do for now. 

In closing, I'll just say that I feel the community that you promote from becoming involved in charity walks is one of the more important things you can do.  Sure, they are not all that personal.  Folks don't exactly strike up conversations with your fellow walkers, though I imagine some do.  But they are good at providing a good way to donate to the cause and get you some exercise as well.  And for those of us who prep, they can be a good low stress report card for bugging out, granted in a limited fashion.

That's all for now.  Thanks for listening,
-jim

Breaking the Ice

So, this is to be my little corner of the Web, I suppose.  I have been working on getting my family prepared for a while now, and have read more than my fair share about preparedness both in books and on the Internet. 

I am going to try and add my spin on things by taking a common sense approach to things.  Reading other people's blogs, forum posts, books, or articles, I have noticed that many people seem to be on one extreme or the other.  I think we all have times that we fit either extreme or the other, but sometimes we are in the middle.  This blog will hope to live in the middle, but sometimes we'll show the logic of the other two sides as well.

A little about me.  I am a Surgery Nurse at a local hospital, having been a Surgery tech previous to that.  I have catered, and even worked as a Delta Ground crew person for a time.  I have a Black belt in Aikijujutsu, and a Brown belt in Judo, and am currently learning Pekiti-Tersia-Kali.  I am an avid shooter, and love talking about guns.  I have a beautiful wife, a great son in the second grade and a terrific 18 month old daughter.  We live in Washington state.  

Prepping for me has recently gained importance in my life, though I can't really put a finger on why.  In surgery we have a saying, "Better to have and not need than to need and not have".  I think I have started taking that idea home in the form of trying to become more prepared.  I have looked at things like the Katrina disaster, and even more regional things like ice storms back east and wondered:  What would I do...  I think having children has made me think more about doing all that I can for them. 

In the coming posts, I will talk about whatever topics come up in my head.  I will try to make things as easy to understand as possible, but more importantly i will try to help you figure out what willl work for you and present them in a simple, easy to understand manner.
Some things that I intend to cover are:
Why Prepare
Go-Bags / Bug Out Bags
Food Storage Basics
Home Level Emergency Medical Care (as opposed to portable)
Self Defense Tactics, Mindset, Equiptment, Training
Getting the spouse on board with prepping
Firearms Training, Selection, Options
Financial Considerations in Preparedness.


Please feel free to leave comments.  I'd love to hear about things you would lie to talk about, ot things you'd like to see covered in future posts.

I hope you enjoy what you find, and share what you learn.

jim