Prepping for Doomsday - Calorie planning for preppers: a quick person-days rule of thumb
Posted by A-Matter-Of-Time@reddit | preppers | View on Reddit | 63 comments
After a fair bit of reading and number-crunching, I’ve settled on a simple way to check whether you’ve stored enough calories to carry you and your family through to the first proper harvest from a vegetable patch. The idea is that the garden will take over the bulk of your calories once it’s producing, with fishing, hunting and trapping filling some of the gaps.
This rule of thumb is for dry goods, which most prepper larders lean toward because they store well.
If you’re aiming for 2,000 calories per person per day (that’s on the low side if you’re chopping wood and carrying water, so adjust upwards for hard work), use this guide:
- About 500 g (1 lb) of dry staples per person per day
- Plus 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil per person per day
By “dry staples” I mean rice, flour, pasta, oats, dried peas, beans and lentils, cornmeal, instant mash and sugar. Most of these come in at roughly 1,900 calories per pound, and the oil tops up the difference.
For example, I keep several 25 kg (50lb) sacks of whole wheat because it’s very shelf-stable. I mill it with a hand grinder as needed. One 25 kg sack is roughly 50 person-days of calories. Beans and peas often come in 20 kg sacks, which is about 40 person-days per sack.
Obviously, a diet of just the above isn’t ideal or very exciting. Like most of you, I also keep tins, jars and packets to make meals tastier and more varied.
One more thing: include a decent multivitamin, and consider vitamin D if you’re likely to be indoors and out of the sun for the first few weeks.
Good luck, everyone.
NoHuckleberry2543@reddit
As a person who fishes and gardens: pack your pantry to last beyond your first harvest. The garden may under produce and then you have a problem. And never expect to catch fish. It's great when you do, but not reliable. And fishing takes time(if you aren't just setting up an net or jury rigged fish catapult/tension line), time you could be using to gather other resources or chop wood or whatever.
AdrianVeidt1776@reddit
You need enough calories to be able to spin up a dairy operation, not a veggie garden.
Cows convert starchy grass into milk which is highly digestible protein and fat. Even better they do so in mass quantities. Two dairy cows that you can freshen at opposing times is the real sustainable food source.
A-Matter-Of-Time@reddit (OP)
One of the possible outcomes of a TEOTWAWKI is that the hoards may have left the cities, travelled to the country and killed and eaten just about every cow, pig, horse, chicken, duck, goose, etc. leaving domesticated farm animals almost extinct.
AdrianVeidt1776@reddit
In that scenario, a giant field of potatoes is definitely the way to go. Assuming you can hold onto your seed potatoes and land and preps, but not your animals.
A-Matter-Of-Time@reddit (OP)
I read a few days ago that 50% of people didn’t know potato chips/crisps were made of potatoes! So I doubt they’ll be able to recognise potato plants growing, as long as you arrange them randomly around your growing space.
sgtPresto@reddit
Nuclear war was mentioned. Many years ago in trained as a county Civil Defense Radiologic Monitor. I recall some pointers on dealing with fallout.
Ideally, live outside a 30 mile radius of any blast. Seal all windows and doors with duct tape for first couple weeks. Have a activated carbon or HEPA filter for a window unit to bring in filtered air.
Have a dosimeter card to track your exposure and a simple monitor to measure presence (two different things)..
Consider having a Spiderwort plant because it is the only plant to react to radiation when its pedestals turn bright pink (a visual indicator of presence of fallout). Have potassium iodide tablets stockpiled.
Plant sunflowers in contaminated soil for one season and by next season, it will be free from radioactive fallout.
Dig up top five inches of soil to remove fallout.
Stay inside for at least two weeks because fallout downgrades 7 factor over 10 so in a couple weeks should be safe.
JRHLowdown3@reddit
Have studied this subject for years. Do not remember anything about sunflowers in common references like "Long term effects of Nuclear war" by Glasstone or any of the CD books relating to farming/growing food post attack. Can you provide a reference for this? Nor the spiderwort reference.
sgtPresto@reddit
Google Sunflower and Radioactive fallout
JRHLowdown3@reddit
Very interesting, thank you!
Would assume it would take an extremely intensive planting with little spacing to make this work well. But definitely better than nothing.
We have about a dozen large old vinyl billboard ads we keep around and use for various things like covering garden areas. If time permitted, we would be sure they were covering key growing areas, firewood sheds, etc.
sgtPresto@reddit
Here is my solution. 31 raised beds with tarps for each.
Beginning_End777@reddit
Don't forget to stock up on Chia seeds- a good source of protein- and don't rule out making flour out of acorns in a pinch.
Level_Sun8466@reddit
Vegetable oil is 0 nutrition. Harvest and rarify actual fat.
Ghigs@reddit
You may want to redo the calories from a garden harvest. The way you phrase this as a patch, makes me wonder. You'd need a LOT of garden to give enough calories to keep someone alive.
Ballparks are like 0.1-0.2 acres of the most calorie dense crops, like potato or beans, per person. Double that if you want low density but nutritional foods and some variety.
If your plan doesn't include hunting you are going to be tending a very large garden. (9,000-18,000 square feet per person)
foot_down@reddit
Yeah, you're generally not living well off vegetable crops. Potatoes are about the only survival crop,, ask the Irish! We homestead 5 acres for 15years in a very temperate climate and produce probably 90% of our staples, the stuff we buy from the store is just luxury of choice (and preps!) Calorie-wise, fruit trees and gardens provide seasonings side dishes and dessert. Animals are by far your best food source for calorie density and nutrients. You can still thrive with minimal carbohydrates but you cannot survive without fat and complete proteins!
My husband goes fishing in summer and we buy full grown lambs to butcher from a neighbor. Per year in the freezer to feed 4-5 people: One 2year old cattle beast and 3 sheep supplemented with frozen fish, old layer hens and young roosters. A dozen laying hens and a rooster to raise replacements, provide 5-10 eggs a day, 9 months of the year. Calorie rich beef fat (tallow) is used to make our soap and skin balms for the year as well as cooking. We also grow 3 sacks of potatoes per crop twice a year, one sack is seed for the nexf crop. Soon to have a cow in milk, one dairy cow provides calories galore, enough to share, but remember she needs lots of calories to produce it...
JRHLowdown3@reddit
We raised some cattle for a few years.
This is the conundrum as I see it with them from a survival standpoint-
Pluses-
They utilize pasture but also will eat some light brush (mine did). If you have a large area like this you will either be wasting fuel you may not have cutting it at least once or twice a year (fire prevention, maintaining sight lines, etc.) or it can be feeding cattle.
They are a huge animal, producing a lot of meat.
Minuses-
They are a very visible animal, which adds to security issues in numerous ways.
Putting up a few hundred lbs of meat in a short period of time possibly WITHOUT the benefit of electricity could be a problem, especially for small groups or single families. Helluva lot of smoking and canning going on after butchering. Down our way, we get cold weather but couldn't begin to leave a large animal like this hanging for a few days outside, rare to have long spites of cold weather like that.
We raised ours without a boatload of ABX and meds. We wormed them a few times, dusted them with DE and didn't have any health issues. Albeit this is a small sample size (few dozen over about 4 years). But like all animals they can have health issues.
Carrying capacity of the land- remember we are talking about situations where getting 10 rolls of hay delivered isn't an option. Land for current grazing as well as land set aside for hay cutting.
I remember my buddies from Ecuador's Mom teaching me how to butcher chickens when I was young. I remember thinking later- "she didn't plunge it in cold water and prepare it for the freezer like all the books say." Reason is she was used to killing that animal and eating it that night. Keeping smaller animals "on the hoof" sort of speak that can be killed for a meal tonight nullifies needing some of the preservation techniques necessary for larger animals. We've done the same with rabbits, but it's easier to but 4-6 at a go IMO and then just put one aside for dinner that night and the rest in the freezer.
JRHLowdown3@reddit
This.
And keep in mind the idea of 2 little 4x4 "raised beds" "growing all your food" is utter non sense. I don't care "intensive" the planting, the style, etc.
Also, it takes a long time to get soil in shape, for fruit trees to start producing (4-5 years at least), fish stocked in ponds to start getting to eating size, new hens to start laying (4-6 months), etc.
We put a lot of lot of effort into food production early on. With easily an acre plus in gardens, 100+ fruit trees, several dozen grape vines, raising rabbits and chickens, etc. we were at best able to produce about 50% or so of our total food needs, with meat hovering around 90% of our needs. That took about 5-6 YEARS boots on the ground, working on those regularly, etc.
The idea of opening your #10 can of seeds, kicking some dirt to the side and a few months later having a bountiful harvest is pure fantasy.
Further, few account for growing GRAINS, usually it's just all in season vegetables.
What your striving for is what we called a Pioneer food supply- grow enough that you can eat some fresh while in harvest but also enough that you can can/dry/put up enough to get you till NEXT HARVEST, i.e, next year.
That's the tough one. But it's important to keep in mind when MOST people say they "grow all their own food" they mean having some vegetables IN SEASON, and that's it. For survivalists, this is much much more complex than that....
RelativelyRidiculous@reddit
People forget in the past surviving on what you produce was more of a extended family and friends project. My grandparents on both sides came from farm families and had huge gardens every year. They traded skills and produce for other things. Growing up we never purchased much in the way of fruit, veg, or meat from the shops because of this extended family barter system. Mind you, we still had something over 4 acres of garden of our own as well, but it isn't that practical to grow a little plot of wheat.
My parents, their siblings, and all the cousins like me were just expected to do our part in the scheme. I recall spending a significant amount of my time growing up tending the gardens, assisting with big projects like mowing and bailing hay, and going out to forage or pick. There were always family and friends who had things like old briar patches bearing berries along fence lines or old orchards that hadn't been tended in a generation who were happy for us to go glean what we might. Our labor was also exchanged for things like bushels of sweet corn from one great-uncle or we'd help tap trees and haul wood in the fall in exchange for some of the maple syrup produced at a cousin's place.
For meat there were group arrangements. Various relatives who ran cattle, raised hogs, or had sheep or turkeys would arrange deals based on what the rest of their animals auctioned for, minus something various projects we assisted with on their farms. I've painted a lot of barns, herded cattle and sheep, and fed animals of all sorts when the family had to leave for a funeral or went on vacation.
JRHLowdown3@reddit
Yep. This is what a functioning group will do in hard times. +1
Ghigs@reddit
Yeah my family had about a 6000 square foot vegetable garden when I was a kid, as well as fruit trees. My parents were refugees from city living that got the wild hair to try to live mostly independently off the land in the 70s. It was so much work for so little result really.
A solid week or two of hot hard work pressure canning in august, after numerous hours of tending the garden.
And they still supplemented it with u-pick apples and strawberries from orchards. Apples pressed for juice or made into apple butter, strawberries frozen sliced.
Anyway even with all that, it's not like we didn't buy groceries.
Gardening should not be underestimated in the amount of work vs what you get, it's a hard living, and it takes a LOT of gardening to make a decent amount of food.
premar16@reddit
My family has a 200 acre farm we also had a large garden but it went to help feed multiple people and families. We would have garden parties where we would spend weekends just tending to it. It took many grandchildren. We also had dairy cows and goats. The place also has a few fruit trees. A whole section for corn fields. Even with this we did go to the store from time to time. I no longer live in the area but my family has the farm. Gardening is hard work but that doesn't mean people shouldnt give it a go
party_peacock@reddit
I agree with all your points on crops, but imo relying on hunting could just be making the same mistake as OP, thinking that there'll always be this food source available.
imo once SHTF and people ignore hunting restrictions (as well as swathes of people who wouldn't otherwise hunt joining in) would drive most species to extinction save for in the far remote regions.
OBotB@reddit
Adding in some high calorie supplementals would help if they grow in your growing zone - Hazelnut bushes, peanuts, fatty/oily seeds (sesame [~80cal per tbsp], breadseed poppy and sunflower [~50cal per tbsp], chia [~60cal per tbsp]), etc.
A-Matter-Of-Time@reddit (OP)
Yes, thank you. I was trying to keep things a little lighter, but I understand.
My grandfather was a farmer (and I was free labour on the farm). Each year he had a quarter of a field turned over to vegetable growing for all the family. Even on that scale, it would have been touch and go whether it would be enough for, say, 4 people if it were their main source of calories. Therefore, I also plan on growing grains like wheat, naked oats, naked barley, quinoa amongst others. This will bulk up the calories, although it will be labour-intensive with no machinery.
Own_Cardiologist_989@reddit
I double checked the numbers on some of those items, and it looks like you're not too far off. I like the idea of generalizing things to one number so I can simplify rations.
Personally, I round down on prepping estimates though. So I'd call a pound of food about 1,500 calories. Then when some of it is lost you've helped account for that. Food spoils, burns to the pan, and otherwise doesn't make it into your diet.
Rivendell_rose@reddit
Yeah, this is off by about 500 calories. I’ve researched this and most grains/legumes only give you about 1500 calories per pound. Here’s what I’ve found so far:
1 Pound Legumes Yields: Black bean: dry 2.5 cups; cooked 6.4 cups (41.8 oz): 1452 calories Navy beans: dry 2.2 cups; cooked 6 cups (38.6 oz): 1530 calories Kidney beans: dry 2.5 cups; cooked 6.7 cups (42 oz): 1500 calories Green Lentils: dry 2.4 cups; cooked 6.9 cups (48.5 oz): 1518 calories Chickpeas: dry 2.3 cups; cooked 6.4 cups (38.8 oz): 1445 calories
1 Pound Grains and Tubers Yields: Bread Wheat: 1657 calories Long grain white rice: dry 2.5 cups; 7.5 cups cooked: 1530 calories Medium grain white rice: dry 2.3 cups; 6.9 cups cooked: 1407 calories Basmati Rice: dry 2.3 cups; 6.9 cups cooked: 1407 calories. Flint corn: 1370 calories Dent corn: 1,400-1,600 calories Yellow potatoes: 322 calories Russet potatoes: 362 calories Sweet potatoes: 345 calories
ragun2@reddit
Awesome comment. Makes me want to see how long I could last just eating stuff like rice, beans, and maybe potatoes like when I used to do stuff like that for fun.
Wouldn't last long because the gf. She hates when I do stuff like that because of how her childhood was. Freaks her out.
Rivendell_rose@reddit
Lol, I guess you could technically last until the micronutrient deficiencies killed you, which would probably take some time, maybe more than a year. This diet needs to be supplemented with nutrient dense greens, sprouts and seeds/nuts along with some fats and, ideally, dairy or meat to provide all the necessary nutrients.
A-Matter-Of-Time@reddit (OP)
Good point on cooking wastage. One of the things about everything suddenly going south is WHEN it happens. The ‘best’ time would be around December. You can hole up for a couple of months until things go quiet outside and the emerge ready to work in your garden. So, I’ll be trying to work out how long to eke out my rations depending on the time of year. December would be 2 months holed up + 3 months before there’s anything to eat (probably turnips as they grow and mature in cooler conditions). So 5 months may be the minimum food/calories you’ll need (unless you’re an expert hunter/fisher/forager).
legoham@reddit
I plant in zone 5, and I can grow green leafy and root vegetables in my garden in Winter months. If anyone currently gardens, it will be worth their time to learn which plants will survive despite damaging weather and which plants will be energy dense (shoutout to kale).
hoardac@reddit
Root vegetables for the win. Just picked the last of the Dinosaur Kale got a full garbage bag. This years fails were cauliflower and celery.
A-Matter-Of-Time@reddit (OP)
Brassicas and especially Kale always gets my vote.
dittybopper_05H@reddit
You will need to plan for more than that. Worse case scenario is that it happens in spring. So you have to hole up for a month or two, and you can't plant anything because either everything is fried (Chicxulub level impactor) or radioactive (nuclear war).
So you can't plant anything for about a year, and you have to wait at least 3 months before you can harvest anything after you plant, so you're now looking at 12 months + 3 months = 15 months.
Round up, figure on 18 months.
That's of course if you're a doomsday prepper, which I'm not. But thinking about it is a fun intellectual exercise.
A-Matter-Of-Time@reddit (OP)
My wife would kill me if I tried cramming 18 months of food in the house 😂
churnthedumb@reddit
You could just get loads of rice, as a just in case scenario, that wouldn’t take up as much room as a ton of canned food etc And maybe you could store stuff outside? In a plastic bin with a lid so animals can’t get to it, of course
A-Matter-Of-Time@reddit (OP)
I’ve got it hidden everywhere at the moment (under sofas, bottom of wardrobes, under window seats). I got some very sturdy large plastic containers with screw tops and rubber seals from a restaurant owning friend. So these are full and in the shed.
Funnily enough rice is not cheap here in the UK. I think you grow it in the states so it’s relatively cheap.
Own_Cardiologist_989@reddit
Lol, if from the UK then you might not like this idea then. I was thinking about how sweet tea would be nice to have. It's both caffeine and calories all in one, so you'd get more out of a water boil. Plus black tea and sugar are shelf stable for long periods.
But on another note, how hot does that shed get in your warmer season? I know it's likely not getting as hot as the 40C I felt this summer in Indiana, but I'm curious for the sake of preserving your stashes because heat can ruin them.
A-Matter-Of-Time@reddit (OP)
I’m in a maritime climate where I’m located. So the sea, which hovers around 10C/50F, most of the year keeps it milder in the winter and cool in the summer. The shed’s also north facing with a wall to the south and a giant tree shading it all summer so, luckily, just doesn’t get warm at all.
pepe_silvia_12@reddit
Dumb question but I’m new to all this: how are you preparing these dry goods? Just boiling in water like you normally would? I’ve realized I’ve given thought to the food preps but not the preps to actually cook some of it.
A-Matter-Of-Time@reddit (OP)
I’m lucky in that the house (well cottage really) that we have came with a solid fuel cooker (you can burn coal or wood in it). This has an oven and a long hotplate, the end nearer the fire being much warmer than the far end. So I can slow cook/casserole things like the peas and beans in the oven, cook the rice and oatmeal in a pan on the hotplate as well as cook flatbreads directly on the hotplate. The downside is that I won’t be able to take this with us if we have to relocate after a SHTF, it’s just too big and more or less permanently installed.
If/when relocating I would need to try and find a house with a ‘wood burner’ fire as you can cook on top of this with a saucepan or frying pan. You could also make bread in a Dutch oven on top.
As well as the cooker I have three gas burners. Two double burner ones and a small single ring one. I also have a couple of large bottles of gas which could last a few months when combined with a ‘thermal cooker’ I have (which is like a vacuum-flask as big as a saucepan that you can put a hot pot in and it will continue cooking for 2 or 3 hours). This is the sort of thing - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tayama-Stainless-Steel-Thermal-Cooker/dp/B09CLSX2SR - although I got mine at a fraction of this cost on eBay.
pepe_silvia_12@reddit
Hey thanks for the response and info! Hopefully we never need to use it but appreciate you.
A-Matter-Of-Time@reddit (OP)
👍
Queasy_Answer7484@reddit
Do you have a link to the hand grinder?
A-Matter-Of-Time@reddit (OP)
Better be quick! - https://www.ebay.com/itm/306533629146
A-Matter-Of-Time@reddit (OP)
This is the sort of thing:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deluxe-Victorio-Hand-Crank-Grain/dp/B0854MDRLQ
However, I have managed to get three of these (yer know ‘two is one, one is none’) from eBay all for about £25\$30 each.
AdventurousRun7636@reddit
1500 min men, 1200 women
Spiley_spile@reddit
Hopefully your country has good environmental protection laws. The water pollution is big where Im at. This limits the number of fish that are safe to eat each month. Animal populations are way down. And animal disease rates are on the rise.
JRHLowdown3@reddit
Where is this BTW?
dittybopper_05H@reddit
Elephant Island. Assumption is with global warming the climate will change enough that you can grow citrus trees there soon.
.--- --- -.- .
dittybopper_05H@reddit
In all honesty, though, and joking aside. the story of the Shackleton expedition is something every prepper should read.
A-Matter-Of-Time@reddit (OP)
I’m in the UK where there is a very small hunting community (because there isn’t much to hunt). Also, our rivers are not on the scale of continental or North American rivers so the fishing in these is never going feed anyone for long (although they’re probably cleaner than most developed countries).
Spiley_spile@reddit
Im always heartened when folks report back that their rivers are healthy. Keep up the good work! Ive met too many preppers who think they'll fish, but never took river pollution into account, nor did anything to try to protect their watershed as a prep.
A-Matter-Of-Time@reddit (OP)
I’m planning on relocation a little after the SHTF. With no real mountains in the UK smaller water sources and even rivers can be very unreliable in a dry year. You may not die of thirst but your veggies may not make it!
venerealderangement@reddit
Love the rule of thumb, I would add a half tablespoon salt ration per person per day for flavor and electrolytes.
Also highly recommend bulk chicken bouillon. it's got salt and flavor.
dittybopper_05H@reddit
I would actually buy some iodized salt, but a *LOT* of pickling salt.
One of the things you're not going to have in a doomsday scenario is refrigeration. You're going to need to preserve foods for use over the winter, and salting things like meat and some vegetables.
For example, cabbage is a good source of Vitamin C, and making sauerkraut and kimchi is a good way to keep it for the winter.
You'll also want to salt meat to preserve it. You get a deer or a hog if you don't preserve the meat relatively quickly, it's going to go bad in just a couple days to a week depending on the weather (unless it's in the middle of winter).
The Townsends YouTube channel has a wealth of information on how to preserve foods like they did back in the 18th Century before refrigeration.
Here is a playlist of their videos that describe 18th Century food preservation, from ship's biscuit (hard tack it would later be called), salt meat, salt fish, sauerkraut, pemmican, preserving eggs, preserving fruits using brandy or sugar, salting green beans, the list goes on and on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9tdBrpp1V0&list=PL4e4wpjna1vxjVcKc_BHTb0nsvVwimwXt
It even has a recipe for peas pudding like OP describes.
A-Matter-Of-Time@reddit (OP)
Yes, salt, good one! Yep, I’ve got a ton of stock cubes. I’ve experimented with just peas (soaked overnight), water and a stock cube in a casserole done for a couple of hours on the wood burner. With homemade flatbreads it’s a perfectly acceptable prepper meal!
ResolutionMaterial81@reddit
Basically Calories per day per person is the way I look at Long Term Food Storage also.
2,500 CPD for me & 2,000 for my wife, etc
But my calorie planning is for a more minimal physical exertion levels, for example lots of electric chain saws (both battery & 120 vac) & both gravity fed + 48 VDC pumps for water, etc. I also want to minimize the chance of injury during a SHTF as well, as even a minor injury can lead to unintended consequences.
And more than enough Freeze Dried & wheat, etc to last through even the dire catastrophic scenarios before needing to fire up the tractor for a garden.
JRHLowdown3@reddit
We have always based around these numbers- 300 lbs. long grain white rice, 200 lbs. legumes (lentils are ideal, a mix of lentils, black beans, pintos, etc.), 100-150 lbs. of hard red winter wheat, 50 lbs. salt, 50 lbs. sugar. These form the basis of a 1 person 1 year supply. Supplement with 3-4 cases of various #10 cans freeze dried or dehydrated usually a mix of veg and fruit, dehydrated egg mix and some FD meats. We have lived a couple years off our food storage in years gone by when money was very tight. You will be glad you went past the "minimums" and also that you stored the "treat" items, like the cases of 300 MRE Brownies with chocolate chips. God we were thankful for having the "little things" like that stored away. And still 20 years later they are awesome but are definitely approaching their end life- got about a dozen in the fridge right now (they are better cold IMO)
Starting with a 2 week to a month supply of ready to eat nothing more to do to foods like MREs is the best place to start. The first 2 weeks of a real situation is going to be the most chaotic- you could be bugging out, underground waiting fallout to decay, etc. You need something immediate for the first 2 weeks as well as a few for "time is short" situations. They also cut LABOR. Most folks don't live this way, so they drastically underestimate how much physical WORK it is. Add in a disaster and now you add in potential cleanup/rebuilding along with security concerns which always override everything else. If your short on people, tasking one person to spend a few hours grinding wheat and making bread may not currently be your best use of time and labor.
During Helene the first few days we snacked and ate protein bars and didn't have time for a "normal" dinner. By about Day 4 the wife said "I need to cook tonight" and she left cleanup a bit early to do that. It was good for her to do that and it was nice to have a "normal" meal also. We also ate a lot of MREs during Helene, they were nice for "fast" meals that got us right back out cutting trees and clearing debris.
A-Matter-Of-Time@reddit (OP)
Impressive!
Siafu_Soul@reddit
This thread has some of the best simple advice for bare bones food prep I've seen! Thanks to everyone who is adding to it. My personal goal is to have a base source of calories stored that I can add to for variety, but it will keep us fed as we go through any learning curves or setbacks with ramping up food production.
A-Matter-Of-Time@reddit (OP)
👍 and good luck!
AlphaDisconnect@reddit
There is a stay still. Stay warm. Stay in the same room mentality. Humans are 75 watt space heaters. There are tasks that need to be done. Minimise them. You can go like 30 days without food. Not recommended. Get killing. Fish. Rabbits. Whatever else is almost a pest.
A-Matter-Of-Time@reddit (OP)
I guess you have to consider long term plans in a TEOTWAWKI. You may still be alive after 30 days of hiding out but you won’t be in much of a state to then start veg gardening, hunting or foraging.
AlphaDisconnect@reddit
This may be a case. But a case of MREs stretched out. Some crackers. A can of frigging beans mixed in the situation. But wrong and poorly cooked food. Wrong water. Any injuries not treated properly will take you the crap out. Isn't too hard to hold a craftsman catalogue. 22.or. Or swing a pink kids fishing pole into the water for bluegill.