
Business Is Booming for America’s Survival Food King - ductionist
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-11-22/business-is-booming-for-america-s-survival-food-king
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acabal
I always found the prepper mindset a little curious. It seems to me that any
kind of major disaster that would totally knock out reliable access to food
and aid for 3-6 months (i.e. something worse than the recent hurricanes, more
along the lines of climate-change-driven famine apocalypse) will also probably
have knocked it out for far longer than that. What happens when one runs out
of one's few months of stockpiles?

For those of the prepper mindset, it would make more sense to start
homesteading instead. That is, learning to grow and preserve one's own food,
instead of stockpiling a little food but in the end still relying on our
national food supply network. Homesteaders, I think, will be the ones who
survive the true nuclear/climate change apocalypse, not preppers.

~~~
tzs
> I always found the prepper mindset a little curious. It seems to me that any
> kind of major disaster that would totally knock out reliable access to food
> and aid for 3-6 months (i.e. something worse than the recent hurricanes,
> more along the lines of climate-change-driven famine apocalypse) will also
> probably have knocked it out for far longer than that. What happens when one
> runs out of one's few months of stockpiles?

I would expect that the world would go through several stages after such a
disaster:

1\. Disaster happens that destroys normal food production and distribution
over much of the world.

2\. Widespread violence breaks out as people realize help will not be coming
and starting fighting over resources.

3\. After a couple of months, the fighting and starvation have greatly reduced
the population. Most who have survived are weak and out of ammo for firearms.

4\. Those who had 6 month stockpiles and were able to keep them (either by
being somewhere away from the violence, or by having sufficient arms to defend
them) come out and start working with similarly prepared people to get farming
going again in their area. They are in good health and have ammo for firearms
and so can deal with any survivors of stage 3 who want to try to steal from
them.

I don't think the goal when preparing for this kind of disaster is to live off
your stockpile until civilization is back to normal--that would take way more
than 6 months. I think it is to live off the stockpile until things stabilize
and we have enough regional civilization to enable seriously working on
rebuilding.

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CPLX
Eventually they build a spaceship and hire a hotshot ex-NASA guy to drive it
forward and backward in time.

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sandworm101
If this is really survival food, it is very complicated and expensive. Plain,
normal, rice can be stored basically forever if you keep it dry. A few kilos
of rice will keep a family alive through any natural disaster. Looking at the
foods offered by this company, their customer base seems to be prepping for
post-hurricane dinner parties.

~~~
sbierwagen
White rice has little fat or protein, and brown rice doesn't store very well.
The gold standard for prepper grain is hard red wheat:
[https://store.lds.org/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product3_715...](https://store.lds.org/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product3_715839595_10557__-1__195792)

~~~
slv77
It’s mostly a cultural preference...

Rice works as well as hard red wheat as far as calorie density goes and in the
short term that’s all that really matters for adults. Rice also has some
advantages as it’s more versatile in terms of cooking and taking flavors. A
few cases of Minute Rice, a small camp stove and a variety of seasoning
packets would be a win over a large bag of wheat.

Longer term wheat has a higher protein content and has an advantage that it
can be sprouted to increase vitamin content but you would need to be in pretty
dire straights for that to make a difference. Neither wheat nor rice have
enough fat content needed for long term survival.

Neither wheat nor rice will sustain toddlers without a supplemental high
quality protein source like milk or eggs.

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Dowwie
Camper, back packer here. I benefit by this market as consumers demand better
tasting food. A lot of dehydrated food tastes horrible, but some companies are
competing by improving product. If you want to try some decent dehydrated
good, try the Mountain House brand. Their beef stroganoff is surprisingly
good.

Doomsday prepping has really taken off in America. It's upsetting to think how
many are squirreling away resources in a fortified bunker.

~~~
chiph
Or stashed in a back closet somewhere.

I lived in hurricane country for a long time, and having a week's worth of
bottled water & shelf-stable food in the house just made good sense. (I was
without power for 10 days after Hugo in 1989).

I will say the taste has really improved over the years. I was fed some of the
original MREs back in the 80's (guard duty at a USAF base) and the ones the
military have today are way more palatable. Same with the freeze-dried food.

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protomyth
If you live in the north and don’t have a week of food stores then you are a
bit of an idiot. Having long lasting food available is a peace of mind thing.
Heck, given some history, having food in your car during the winter isn’t a
bad idea. Last winter, I was stuck in my apartment for 3 days.

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kalleboo
I live in a country with regular earthquakes and recent experience with the
government response to massive emergencies.

Our preparedness is this: Water for 3 days, food for less than a week. Those
things come in quickly from the government.

After that initial couple of days, what people in stricken areas are desperate
for: batteries to charge their phones. Toilet paper. Soap. Diapers. Sanitary
pads. Plastic bags for waste.

After that, the most important thing is having enough savings to rebuild your
life after your home, belongings, town, job are all gone.

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jmnicolas
I was quite surprised to see on the photos that the food processing plant
looked quite dirty. Don't they have high standards to adhere to ?

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rabboRubble
Have you ever read The Jungle?

There is a reason we have food regulation. Without regulation, food producers
do nasty things. Vomit inducing things.

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jmnicolas
"The Jungle" ?

~~~
fake-name
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle)

Heh, beat.

TL;DR it was basically a massive expose on the conditions in the food and
meat-packing industry in 1904 that lead to the creation of what is now the
FDA, and the establishment of regulations concerning food sanitation and
requirements about ingredient purity that we still greatly benefit from today.

~~~
jamestimmins
Interestingly, it actually wasn't intended as an expose of food/meat-packing.
It was intended to show the failings of capitalism and the virtues of
socialism. But Sinclair's descriptions of the Chicago food industry made more
of an impact than his political commentary.

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maxerickson
13,600 calories is enough food to actually feed a family of 4 for about 2
days.

The "servings" of the meals listed on their website are about 250 calories.
500 calories is small meal for many adults.

~~~
NikolaeVarius
I presume these are supposed to be survival rations. In a survival situation,
I damn hope you're on a reduced calorie diet.

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CapitalistCartr
Why hope that? Having enough calories is essential to being able to do
strenuous work. Taking hunger out of the equation is the point of having a
food reserve.

~~~
HorizonXP
I’d be more concerned about water TBH. Most of us carry a fair amount of fat,
enough to survive several weeks without eating. Having rations available
extends that timeline a lot. But without drinking water, that’s all moot,
since you can’t survive long without that.

Really depends on your timelines. Prep for short-term disaster scenarios on a
1-2 week timelines should be manageable for most, and really we should all be
doing it. Prep for longer timelines is much harder.

~~~
gozur88
>I’d be more concerned about water TBH. Most of us carry a fair amount of fat,
enough to survive several weeks without eating.

They used to call it "the law of twos" \- you can live two minutes without
air, two days without water, and two weeks without food.

So yeah, water is the big concern. Two weeks without food is the low end, but
electrolyte imbalances can kill you even if you still retain plenty of stored
calories.

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madengr
Why not just buy canned food? Much cheaper and don't have to rehydrate it.
Just eat though it.

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slv77
Most people are limited in storage space and canned foods aren’t very calorie
dense as you’re storing mostly water. Inside cans are also coated with a
plastic liner and over time that liner breaks down and can contaminate the
food. This reduces shelf life especially for acidic foods like tomatoes or
fruit. Families that want to store a couple of weeks of canned food need yards
of shelf space and need to eat a lot of canned foods to rotate it before it
deteriorates.

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Taniwha
I've somehow found my way onto some prepper spam list, and can't for the life
of me get off - these people are bat-shit crazy, they need a big food
poisoning scare or something

