
Costco selling $6,000 doomsday-prepper food kits – feed a family of 4 for a year - tacon
http://www.businessinsider.com/costco-emergency-food-kits-for-doomsday-preppers-last-25-years-2018-3
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joezydeco
It's not just preppers. Members of the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons)
are taught to build up reserves of food and other resources.

[https://ldsblogs.com/9618/mormon-faq-why-do-mormons-store-
fo...](https://ldsblogs.com/9618/mormon-faq-why-do-mormons-store-food)

~~~
dragonwriter
> It's not just preppers.

Maybe, I mean it's a _very_ cost-effective “i need to eat but not think about
it” alternative to something like Soylent (assuming you have the storage
space), so there may be a non-prepper market, but...

> Members of the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) are taught to build up
> reserves of food and other resources.

Pointing to a group for whom being preppers is a religious practice (and maybe
even a doctrinal obligation) is not support for the idea that the market for a
product isn't just preppers.

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rando444
Supply chains are something that are always taken for granted until there's an
emergency.

Regardless of the motivations, if this gets more people prepared for an
emergency, I think it's a good thing.

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bshepard
For reference, Superdeluxe remix of Jim Bakker selling buckets of food:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnaSvvSqY-8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnaSvvSqY-8)

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jondwillis
Vic Berger's supercuts of Trump with the airhorn and theme music and fake
crowd sounds are so impossibly funny and terrifying at the same time

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Sidnicious
It’s worth noting that they’ve sold these kits for at least ten-ish years. I
remember seeing them on the website and thinking how cool it was that you
could buy a year of food _as a unit_.

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jandrese
I like that they at least have a decent shelf life. I've seen a bunch of these
prepper kits that include items with 3-5 year shelf lives, which means you
need to be eating your doomsday food regularly and restocking it. That's not
ideal since most of this food is designed to keep you alive, not to taste
great.

Of course you'll have the same problem with these kits in 24 years, having a
year of eating nearly expired lentils and dried cranberries if the world
doesn't come to an end.

And of course this kit seems to forget about the 1 year worth of fresh water
storage. Hopefully whomever buys it doesn't.

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dragonwriter
> Of course you'll have the same problem with these kits in 24 years

If you use and replace 1/25 of your annual consumption with them each
year—about a day's consumption every other month—this is less of a problem
(with 3-5 year shelf life, the gradual replacement strategy doesn't work as
well.)

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Nullabillity
Doesn't seem like you can (easily) buy a 25th of one of the kits, so replacing
it gradually still doesn't seem like a very practical solution.

~~~
Someone
Seems a good opportunity for a startup, if they can solve the problem of how
to deliver the stuff without knowing the delivery address (if you are into
this, you don’t want anybody to know where your food is)

Such a startup could also offer to take in that 25 year old 1/25th part to
give it to a food bank, making the purchase deductible as a gift to charity.

Unfortunately, customers only need to start replacing stuff after years (you
may want to replace 1/25th a year on average, but do you really want to start
doing that a year after buying this?)

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jimmies
I recently re-read the story of James Kim, and got interested in the "toy"
question: If I am stuck in a blizzard or a disaster, what should I be worried
about? The rule of thumb is I can be cold for 3 hours, be thirsty for 3 days,
be hungry for 30 days. There have been stories of people who are stuck in a
car in a blizzard for months, didn't eat much and were OK. Being hungry sucks,
but it takes a long time for hunger to kill you.

If the wasteland has hazards or hostile people, I need to worry about my
physical security so guns with lots of ammos will go a long way too.

So I keep in my car a lighter, an old dumb cell phone that has microUSB lead I
can charge easily with my car cigarette lighter or anything that has USB out,
a knife, a super bright flashlight, and a first aid kit. I don't store cans of
food. That sounds pretty stupid.

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piaste
Interesting thought experiment.

What do you think about storing some water in the car? On the one side, it's
the most critical resource after wound treatment and shelter - you won't
survive more than a few days without it. Also, if you're just semi-hibernating
in a closed environment (and possibly _cough_ recycling), you'll need much
less water than normal so you can realistically keep enough water for a week
or more. On the other side, most "stuck in a car" scenarios (at least in the
northern hemisphere) involve rain or snow, and if they aren't and they last a
month or more, your water reserve won't save you.

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jimmies
I keep a bottle of water too. Yes, I think realistically the only reason that
I'm stuck that way is because of a blizzard. Melting snow is going to be the
solution. In any case I think given I don't die right away, the best chance to
be found and rescued is to have a radio transmitter device. So the cell phone,
even when it doesn't work, is the next most valuable thing. There are tons of
stuff we can do with the cell phone or ham radio. Kim was searched for, just
that they couldn't find him. I think being searched for is the most realistic
scenario if something like that happens to me.

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kirykl
So by selling this instead of hoarding it Coscto is confirming its bearish on
a scenario where food becomes scarce for a year or more

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mywittyname
Costco knows their customers, not the future.

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banakkaffalatta
Shouldn't they store things like vegetable seeds or other products you can
grow yourself so you're not worried about shelf life, it takes less space and
is healthier?

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orbitingpluto
*Can opener not included.

