My $500 Beginner Prepper Plan

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

If you haven't prepared for some kind of disaster or emergency scenario, now is the time. With the ongoing war in Iran, markets going crazy, and the tension between the East and West higher than it's been in decades, there's no time to waste. Especially if prices keep going up.

If you have at least $500, then you have enough money to get prepared for all the most likely disaster scenarios. The question is, how exactly do you spend that money? It's easy to freeze up from analysis paralysis or blow hundreds of dollars on some tactical gear you'll never actually use.

Don't make either of those mistakes. With a tight budget, the goal is simple: cover the basics, skip the fancy stuff, and build a foundation you can add to over time. There's plenty of debate about what to prioritize first. Should you start with food storage? Water filtration? A bug out bag?

We've already created several beginner prepping lists on this website, but I recently came across a YouTube video from the channel TheOneRow that really impressed me. David has been prepping for over 25 years, and the way he breaks down a $500 beginner kit is very practical and exactly what someone just getting started needs to hear.

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You can video the video below, but I'm also going to walk you through his plan. If you haven't started prepping, this is a great place to begin. If you're already an experienced prepper, send this breakdown to a friend or family member. It really makes preparedness feel a lot simpler.

The $500 Beginner Prepper Plan

As David points out, this list assumes you already own the really basic stuff like shoes, a jacket, and maybe a backpack. What you're doing here is filling in the gaps so you can handle a temporary emergency scenario.

He also keeps firearms off the main list (since not everyone can or wants to own one), though he does recommend allocating an extra $500 for a budget pistol, holster, and ammo if that's an option for you.

With that said, here's how he'd spend the $500:

1. Water ~$80

This is first for a reason. In any emergency, clean water becomes your most urgent need fast.

• Sawyer Mini Water Filter (~$25 each) — David recommends picking up two or three of these if you can. They're compact, reliable, and can filter hundreds of gallons. For a single person, one is a solid start.
• 7-gallon Aquatainer water jugs (~$20 each) — These let you store a meaningful amount of clean water at home. Grab one or two to start.
• Water purification tablets (~$15) — A backup to the filter. Cheap insurance.

The combination of storage, filtration, and chemical purification means you've got multiple ways to get safe drinking water no matter what the situation is.

2. Food Storage ~$100

The goal here isn't gourmet. It's calories, shelf life, and cost efficiency.

• Bulk rice, beans, oats, and peanut butter — These are the workhorses of budget food storage. High calorie, long shelf life, and dead cheap per serving.
• Extra pantry staples you already eat — David's smart suggestion: spend about $50 of this buying extra of stuff you'd normally buy anyway. Macaroni and cheese, canned goods, whatever your family actually eats. That way nothing goes to waste even if you never need it.

If you're thoughtful about it, $100 can realistically get you 2–3 weeks of calories for one person. More if you've got a family and you're cooking from the bulk stuff.

3. Cooking ~$60

All that food does you no good if you can't cook it when the power's out.

• Small propane camp stove + two 1 lb isobutane canisters (~$40) — Simple, portable, and gets the job done. Works outside, in a garage, or anywhere with ventilation.
• Lighters and fire-starting kit (~$20) — A handful of quality lighters and some basic fire-starting material. Don't overthink it — just make sure you can reliably start a fire if you need to.

4. Lighting and Power ~$50

When the grid goes down, you'll be very glad you spent this fifty bucks.

• Rechargeable headlamps (~$15–20) — You can get a 3-pack on Amazon for a reasonable price. Hands-free lighting is a game-changer.
• Solar lantern (~$20) — Great for lighting up a room at night without burning through batteries.
• USB battery pack (~$15–20) — Lets you keep your phone charged, which keeps you connected to information, maps, and communication.

5. First Aid and Hygiene — ~$50

This one's easy to underestimate until you actually need it.

• Pre-built first aid kit (~$30) — You're not going to get a fully kitted trauma bag at this price point, but a solid basic kit covers cuts, burns, sprains, and common injuries.
• Personal hygiene supplies (~$20) — Extra toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, and hand sanitizer. When things get rough, staying clean becomes more important, not less. It affects morale, health, and disease prevention.

6. Tools and Self-Defense ~$100

This is where you start building the capability to handle physical problems, whether that's cutting cordage, preparing food, or protecting yourself.

• Fixed-blade knife (~$50) — Look for something with a 4.5–5.5 inch blade and a comfortable handle. You don't need to spend a lot here — decent overseas-made knives in this price range are plenty capable for a beginner kit.
• Multi-tool (~$30–50) — A Gerber or similar brand gives you pliers, a screwdriver, a saw, and a dozen other things in one package. Worth every penny.
• Pepper spray (~$10–15) — David recommends this even if you do own a firearm. There are plenty of situations where you want to deter someone without escalating to lethal force. It's cheap, legal almost everywhere, and easy to carry.

7. Information and Communication ~$50–60

This one often gets skipped by beginners, and it's a mistake.

• Paper maps of your local area — If your phone dies or cell towers go down, GPS goes with them. Know your area on paper.
• Emergency radio (battery-powered or rechargeable) — This is how you stay informed when the internet and TV are down. Weather alerts, emergency broadcasts, local news, which are all accessible without a grid connection.
• Extra cash — David mentions this as a catch-all for whatever's left: having a few extra $20s tucked away means you're not completely helpless if card readers go down or ATMs run dry.

What You End Up With

When you step back and look at the full picture, $500 gets you the ability to filter and store water, feed yourself and your family for a few weeks, cook without electricity, stay informed, treat basic injuries, light your home, and protect yourself. Combined with whatever you already own (boots, a jacket, a backpack, some basic tools, etc.), you've suddenly got a legitimate 72-hour kit and a reasonable bug-in setup.

That's a pretty solid foundation. If you're a newbie prepper, start with this list and build from there. You'll thank yourself later.

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You May Also Like:

• 25 Survival Items for Brand New Preppers
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• Top 20 Emergency Supplies for Beginners
• 10 New Year's Resolutions for Beginning Preppers

The post My $500 Beginner Prepper Plan appeared first on Urban Survival Site.

from Urban Survival Site

If We Have a War: Have You Tested Your #10 Cans?

If We Have a War: Have You Actually Tested Your #10 Cans? Most families who have built up a food storage supply did so with the best intentions. They stacked the cans, rotated a few boxes, wrote the year purchased on a piece of tape, and felt ready. But there’s a question that doesn’t get asked nearly enough: Have you opened any of it lately?

Because opening it is the only way to know whether your stored food will actually be of the quality needed to feed your family when it matters most. Can Openers, Large Can Openers, and Electric Can Openers

The Myth of the 25-Year Shelf Life

Walk into any emergency preparedness store or scroll through prepper websites, and you’ll see it everywhere: “25-year shelf life.” It sounds reassuring. It’s also frequently misleading.

That number, when it’s legitimate at all, refers to a very specific set of conditions. The food must be stored in a cool, dry, dark environment with consistent temperatures, ideally between 55 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit. It must be sealed in a nitrogen-flushed, oxygen-absorber-packed #10 can with no prior exposure to humidity, light fluctuations, or heat.

Your garage in July doesn’t qualify. Neither does the corner of a basement that floods. Neither does the closet next to the water heater.

Many families store their emergency food in exactly those kinds of places and never think twice about it. The 25-year clock starts the moment those cans were filled, and it assumes conditions most households simply can’t maintain.

Not All #10 Cans Have a 25-Year Shelf Life

Not all items in your storage have a 25-year life, either. Here is a quick reality check on commonly stored foods and their realistic shelf lives under good but not perfect conditions:

White rice: 25 to 30 years when sealed with oxygen absorbers

Hard red or white wheat: 25 to 30 years when properly sealed

Powdered milk: 2 to 10 years, depending on fat content and storage temperature

Instant Milk (Thrive Life): 25 years under ideal conditions, far less in heat

Freeze-dried fruits and vegetables: 25 years under ideal conditions, far less in heat

Canned goods from the grocery store: 2 to 5 years, sometimes more, but quality declines significantly after that

Cooking oils: 1 to 4 years, and rancid oil is a health hazard, not just a flavor problem

Sugar and honey: indefinite if kept dry and sealed

Salt: indefinite if kept dry and sealed

Pasta: 8 to 10 years under good conditions

Dried beans: technically edible for decades, but after 8 to 10 years, they may never fully soften, no matter how long you soak and cook them. Please note that you could pressure-can them if you have the jars, lids, rings, stove, and fuel available.

That last one surprises people. Old dried beans are safe to eat, but can remain hard as pebbles even after hours of cooking. In a crisis with limited fuel, that’s a serious problem.

What Happens When Food Goes Bad in the Can?

People often assume that sealed means safe. That assumption can get a family into trouble. Inside a sealed can, several things can go wrong over time, even without visible signs of damage on the outside.

Oxygen absorbers lose effectiveness. If a can wasn’t properly sealed from the start, or if oxygen was not fully removed, oxidation continues slowly inside. This causes fats to go rancid, vitamins to degrade, and flavors to become stale or unpleasant.

Moisture intrusion causes mold and bacterial growth. Even a tiny pinhole or an imperfectly sealed lid allows moisture vapor to enter over the years. You may open a can that smells fine on first sniff but reveals clumping, discoloration, or a musty odor underneath. You’ll also notice the color has changed. It shouldn’t be dark and discolored. It would be bright and colorful if it were sealed with the correct amount of oxygen absorbers.

Temperature cycling causes condensation inside the can. If a storage area heats up in summer and cools in winter, moisture repeatedly condenses on the inner walls of cans. This degrades product quality and can encourage spoilage even in sealed containers.

Insects can compromise packaging. Grain weevils and other pantry pests are surprisingly good at finding their way into storage areas. If you’re storing grain in buckets without proper seals, you may open a bucket years later to find it’s been colonized.

Signs That Your Stored Food Has Failed

Here’s what to look for when you open a can or package you haven’t checked in a while. Smell is your first and most reliable tool. Freshly stored wheat has a mild, clean, slightly earthy scent. Fresh powdered milk smells faintly dairy-sweet. Freeze-dried vegetables smell like concentrated versions of themselves. When those smells turn sour, rancid, musty, or sharp, something has gone wrong.

Color changes are a strong warning sign. Powdered milk that has yellowed significantly has oxidized badly. Freeze-dried apples that have turned dark brown have likely been exposed to excessive heat. White rice that has developed yellowish or grayish patches may have absorbed moisture.

Check The Texture

Texture tells a story, too. Powdered items that have clumped into solid masses have absorbed moisture. Grains that feel soft or gummy instead of hard and dry have been compromised. Freeze-dried foods that are no longer crisp but instead feel leathery or chewy have lost their protective dry state.

Taste it. This is the step most people skip, and it’s the most important one. A small taste of reconstituted powdered milk, cooked wheat, or rehydrated freeze-dried vegetables will tell you immediately whether the flavor is acceptable. Rancid fat in whole-wheat or whole-grain products has a bitter, almost metallic taste that’s unmistakable. Oxidized powdered milk has a flat, almost soapy flavor. These are foods you don’t want to rely on.

For commercially canned goods, bulging lids are an absolute red flag. Discard any can that bulges, hisses when opened, or has an obviously off smell. Botulism is odorless, but most other forms of spoilage aren’t, and a bulging can is never safe regardless of cause.

How to Actually Test Your Storage

Set aside an afternoon and approach this like a home inspection, not a casual browse. Start by going through every area where you store food and making a written list of what you have, when it was purchased or packed, and where it has been stored. Be honest about the storage conditions. If cans spent three summers in a hot shed, note that.

Then open things. You don’t need to open every can. Open a representative sample from each type and each storage location. Check the oldest items first. Open items stored under the worst conditions first.

Reconstitute powdered products and actually taste them. Cook a small amount of your stored grains and taste the result. Rehydrate a portion of freeze-dried food and taste it. Write down what you find.

Check For Damage On Cans

Check for physical damage on all containers. Look for rust on #10 cans, particularly around the seam and the lid edge. Light surface rust on the outside doesn’t necessarily mean the food inside is bad, but deeper rust or rust near the seal line is concerning. Look for dents on the seam lines of commercial cans, not just on the body. A seam dent is a structural failure that may have compromised the seal.

Check your bucket storage carefully. Gamma seal lids are more reliable than standard snap lids for long-term storage. If your buckets have only standard snap lids, consider whether they have been sealed well enough over the years.

What to Do With What You Find

Food that tests well goes back into storage with a fresh label including the test date and a note that it passed. Food that has declined in quality but is still technically edible gets moved to active use. Work it into your current cooking now so it doesn’t go to waste.

Food that has genuinely failed gets discarded. This is hard when you’ve spent real money building a supply, but eating rancid fat causes real harm, and serving your family food that makes them sick during a crisis is worse than having no food at all.

Replace what you discard with fresh stock, properly sealed, labeled, and stored in your best available conditions. And this time, commit to a rotation and testing schedule so you aren’t in the same position five years from now.

Building a Testing Schedule Going Forward

Emergency food storage isn’t a one-time purchase. It’s more like a garden: something you tend, check on, and actively maintain. A reasonable schedule looks like this. Once a year, do a full audit of your storage. Walk through every location, check dates, look for physical damage, and open and taste at least one item from each category. Twice a year, rotate any items within 2 years of their expected shelf life into active use and replace them. After any significant temperature event, such as a power outage in winter, flooding, or an unusually hot summer, do a spot check on anything that may have been affected.

Keep a simple storage log. A notebook or a basic spreadsheet works fine. Record what you have, where it’s stored, when you purchased or packed it, and when you last tested it. This small investment of time will save you from discovering failures at the worst possible moment.

A Note About Commercial Grocery Store Cans

Not everything in emergency food storage comes from specialty preparedness-oriented companies. Many families round out their supplies with regular canned goods from the grocery store, and that is completely reasonable. But those cans operate on a different timeline.

The dates printed on commercial cans usually list best-by dates, not safety dates. Most commercially canned vegetables, fruits, and meats remain safe to eat well past those dates if the can is undamaged. However, quality, flavor, and nutritional content decline over time. A can of green beans from three years ago is safe. A can of green beans from ten years ago in a corroded or dented can isn’t something to gamble on.

High-acid foods like tomatoes and fruits degrade faster than low-acid foods like vegetables and meats. Commercial canned fish and meat hold up reasonably well for several years past the printed date under good storage conditions.

Plan to rotate your commercial canned goods on a two to three-year cycle, and you’ll generally have no problems.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Preparedness

Having a storage supply on paper and having one that’ll actually function in a crisis are two different things. The gap between them should be tested regularly, not stored indefinitely.

The families who’ll fare best in any extended disruption, whether from a natural disaster, an economic shock, supply chain failure, or something more serious, are the ones who actually know what they have, know that it’s still good, and know how to use it. That knowledge only comes from opening cans, tasting food, and doing the maintenance that effective preparedness actually requires.

Check your cans. All of them. Not because the world is ending next week, but because the whole point of having a supply is to be able to count on it when needed.

Food Poisoning: What You Should Know

Foods That Have a Long Shelf Life

Final Word

As mentioned, having a storage supply on paper and having one that will actually function in a crisis are two different things. Most families stack the cans, write a year on a piece of tape, and feel ready. But sealed doesn’t always mean safe, and 25 years isn’t a guarantee; it’s a best-case number that assumes cool, dry, stable conditions that most homes simply don’t provide. Powdered milk can turn soapy and flat. Dried beans can become permanently hard. Cooking oil goes rancid in ways that are genuinely harmful, not just unpleasant. The only way to know what you actually have is to open it, smell it, and taste it. Do that before you need it. May God bless this world, Linda

The post If We Have a War: Have You Tested Your #10 Cans? appeared first on Food Storage Moms.

from Food Storage Moms

14 Ways to Know that Your Rabbits Like You

Domestic rabbits have something of a reputation as being standoffish and aloof. Compared to dogs and even cats, both of which tend to wear their hearts on their sleeve by comparison, most folks find rabbits inscrutable. Nonetheless, many owners report that they share a close bond with their furry, long-eared companions and that they show ... Read more

14 Ways to Know that Your Rabbits Like You can be read in full at New Life On A Homestead- Be sure to check it out!

from New Life On A Homestead

If We Have A War: What Are People Waiting For?

If We Have a War: What Are People Waiting For? Millions of families have no emergency food, no stored water, and no way to cook without power. Here are the excuses they keep making; and why not one of them holds up under scrutiny.

The headlines keep coming. Geopolitical tensions. Power grid vulnerabilities. Supply chain disruptions. Experts across government agencies and the military have been sounding the alarm for years: the question is no longer whether Americans should prepare for emergencies, but whether they will. And still, the vast majority of households in this country have fewer than three days of food on hand, no meaningful water reserve, and no plan for how to cook a meal if the gas lines go down or the electricity disappears. The excuses are familiar. They’re also, every one of them, wrong.

The time to prepare is before the disaster, not during it. Every week you delay is a week your family continues to live with the high risk of being unprepared.

What are people waiting for? The excuses tend to stay the same.

It Will Never Happen Here

This is the granddaddy of all preparedness excuses and the most dangerous one. History isn’ kind to people who assume geographic immunity. Earthquakes, tornadoes, flooding, wildfires, ice storms, and extended power outages don’t check the address before they arrive. War, whether a direct attack on infrastructure or a cyberattack on the electrical grid, doesn’t spare suburban neighborhoods or rural communities. FEMA consistently reports that the areas hit hardest by disasters are often the ones least prepared for them. The idea that your town, your state, or your country is somehow exempt from catastrophic disruption isn’t confidence. It’s complacency dressed up as confidence.

Emergency food storage, water reserves, and off-grid cooking devices aren’t just for people in high-risk zones. They’re for anyone who eats, drinks, and needs to cook food to survive, which is everyone.

I cannot Afford It

This excuse has a kernel of truth, which makes it particularly sticky. Yes, buying a year’s worth of freeze-dried food at once is expensive. But that isn’t what building emergency food storage actually requires. A 72-hour emergency kit can be assembled for under fifty dollars. Adding a few extra cans of beans, rice, oats, and shelf-stable protein each week at the grocery store costs almost nothing if done incrementally. Over the course of three months, a family of four can build a meaningful reserve without ever feeling a significant financial pinch.

Water storage is even less expensive. Food-grade containers cost a few dollars each. A water filter, such as a Sawyer Squeeze or a basic gravity filter, costs $50 to $60 and can filter thousands of gallons of water, given sufficient time. A single propane camp stove and a few extra fuel canisters from a hardware store are a thirty-dollar emergency cooking solution that’ll last for years. The idea that preparedness is a luxury is simply not supported by the actual cost of basic supplies. What is expensive is being completely unprepared when shelves go bare and delivery trucks stop running. Life Straw Filter Bottle or The Sawyer Squeeze Bag

Single Butane/Propane Stove and Butane Fuel as well as Propane Fuel

The Government Will Take Care of Us

FEMA itself has repeatedly and publicly stated that citizens shouldn’t rely on government agencies as their primary source of emergency aid. After Hurricane Katrina, after Superstorm Sandy, after the Texas freeze of 2021, the pattern has been the same: government response is slow, uneven, and overwhelmed. When a widespread disaster or wartime disruption affects an entire region or the entire country simultaneously, government resources are stretched far beyond their capacity to help individual households in the first days and weeks.

Emergency food storage, water, and cooking capability at the household level isn’t paranoia. It’s the specific behavior that FEMA, the CDC, the American Red Cross, and local emergency management agencies actively recommend. They want you to take care of yourself for at least two weeks, and ideally longer, so that government and relief resources can focus on those who can’t help themselves. Depending entirely on institutional rescue isn’t just naive. It puts your family at the back of an extremely long line.

I Don’t Have the Space to Store Anything

People living in apartments, condos, or small homes often use the lack of space as a reason to skip preparedness entirely. But a two-week supply of food for two people can fit in two or three medium-sized plastic bins stored under a bed, in a closet, or on a shelf in a utility room. Water can be stored in collapsible containers that take up almost no space when empty. Emergency cooking devices, like a compact butane stove, fold flat and fit in a drawer. Collapsible Water Containers

The space argument usually holds up only if someone has never actually priced out how small a meaningful emergency supply can be. A 25-pound bag of white rice, a 25-pound bag of rolled oats, two cases of canned goods, a few jars of peanut butter, and some basic protein sources take up roughly the same amount of space as a medium-sized suitcase. That isn’t a fully expanded preparedness plan, but it’s a foundation that fits almost any living situation. The real issue isn’t space. It’s a priority that needs to be dealt with. I use 5 gallon buckets with Gamma Lids.

I Wouldn’t Even Know Where to Start

This is perhaps the most understandable excuse and the easiest to solve. The barrier of not knowing where to begin stops many well-meaning people from taking any action at all. The answer is simpler than most people expect. Start with water. Store one gallon per person per day, for at least two weeks. A family of four needs at least 56 gallons. That’s roughly nine standard water containers from a grocery store or outdoor supply retailer. That’s what the American Red Cross suggests. You know by now, I want four gallons per person per day. I get thirsty thinking I can only have one gallon a day. That’s why I store a lot of water for Mark and me.

Next, build a two-week supply of food using items your family already eats that have a longer shelf life. Canned beans, canned vegetables, canned fruit, rice, pasta, oats, nut butters, shelf-stable milk, and honey are practical starting points. Then add a way to cook without your home’s standard utility hookups. A propane camp stove, a butane stove, a rocket stove that burns wood or fuel pellets, or a solar cooker all serve this purpose at different price points. That’s the foundation of emergency food and cooking preparedness, and none of it requires special knowledge, a large budget, or significant storage space.

My Food Would Just Expire Anyway

This excuse misunderstands how emergency food storage actually works. The goal isn’t to buy a stockpile and never touch it. The goal is to rotate through your supply using the first-in, first-out method. You buy extra food, you eat from it regularly, and you replace what you use. Done correctly, nothing expires. Your emergency supply becomes a living pantry that you maintain as you would any other grocery stock.

For those who prefer longer-term storage, freeze-dried foods and properly sealed staples like white rice, hard red or white wheat, and dried beans can be stored for twenty-five to thirty years under the right conditions. The expiration excuse applies only if someone is planning to buy food and then completely forgets it exists, which isn’t how preparedness is supposed to work. Learn the rotation principle, practice it, and the expiration problem disappears entirely.

I’ll Just Bug Out If Things Get Bad

The fantasy of simply leaving when things get dangerous is compelling and almost entirely impractical. Where exactly would you go? How would you get there when roads are gridlocked, fuel is unavailable, and everyone else has the same idea at the same time? What would you eat when you arrived? Emergency management professionals consistently point out that evacuation without a pre-planned destination and a stocked vehicle is one of the most dangerous choices a family can make during a crisis.

More importantly, most emergencies and disasters don’t require evacuation. They require sheltering in place for days, weeks, or longer. Home-based food storage, water reserves, and emergency cooking devices are what keep a sheltering family stable, fed, and functional while the situation resolves. Planning to leave isn’t a substitute for preparing to stay. It’s also not a substitute for preparing to leave, since a good bug-out bag still contains food, water, and a portable cooking method.

I Keep Meaning to Do It — I Just Haven’t Gotten Around to It Yet

This is the most honest of all the excuses and possibly the most widespread. Preparedness isn’t urgent on any given calm Tuesday afternoon. There are errands, work obligations, children, social commitments, and a hundred other things that feel more pressing. Emergency preparedness falls into the category of important but not yet urgent, and that’s exactly where it tends to stay until the moment it becomes both important and critical.

The nature of disaster is that it eliminates the luxury of preparation time. A cyberattack on a power grid, a missile strike on a regional logistics hub, a rapid escalation of a military conflict, or simply a severe winter storm doesn’t provide a two-week preparation window. The supply chain disruptions of 2020 gave many Americans a preview of how quickly shelves empty and how long they stay empty. That preview was mild by historical standards and by the standards of what a genuine wartime or catastrophic infrastructure event would bring. Doing it later isn’t a plan. It’s a hope, and hopes don’t feed families.

Storing Food and Water Feels Like Extreme Survivalism

For some people, the idea of food storage carries a cultural association with bunkers, conspiracy theories, and extreme prepper culture that feels uncomfortable or embarrassing. This perception, while understandable, tries to combine two very different things. Recommending that a family keep a month of food and water on hand isn’t significantly different from what grandparents and great-grandparents across every culture on earth considered basic household management. Pantry stocking, root cellars, preserved meats, and stored grains were normal features of family life for most of human history. Industrial supply chains and just-in-time retail made that tradition seem unnecessary. Recent events have demonstrated exactly how fragile those supply chains actually are.

Keeping emergency food, water, and cooking capacity at home isn’t extremism. It’s prudent. It’s what insurance looks like for your family’s most basic needs. You wouldn’t go without health insurance because having it feels overly cautious. The same logic applies here.

My Neighbors or Family Will Help Me

Community and mutual aid are genuinely important parts of disaster resilience. Neighbors do help neighbors. Families do pull together in crises. These things are real and valuable. But they aren’t a substitute for individual household preparedness, for a straightforward reason: in a widespread emergency, your neighbors and family are facing exactly the same pressures you are. If none of you have stored food, water, or emergency cooking capability, the generosity of the community doesn’t create resources that don’t exist.

The most resilient communities in emergencies are those in which individual households are already self-sufficient for at least 2 weeks before a crisis. When everyone has their own supply, community mutual aid becomes about sharing surplus and helping those with genuine needs, not about a scramble for scarce basics that leaves everyone worse off. Being prepared yourself is, in fact, one of the most community-minded things you can do.

75 Reasons Why You Should Store Water Now

How To Build A Food Storage Supply You’ll Use

Final Word

“Preparedness isn’t about fear. It’s about the quiet confidence that comes from knowing your family won’t be desperate in the first week of a crisis.” There’s no good excuse. There are understandable, relatable, and honest ones. But none of them hold up when weighed against the actual cost of being unprepared in a serious emergency. Emergency food storage doesn’t require wealth. Water storage doesn’t require space you don’t have. Emergency cooking devices don’t require expertise you haven’t developed yet. What all three require is a decision, a trip to the store, and a small, consistent habit of adding to what you do have. The question isn’t whether you can afford to prepare. The question is whether you can afford not to. The decision is yours to make. May God bless this world, Linda

The post If We Have A War: What Are People Waiting For? appeared first on Food Storage Moms.

from Food Storage Moms

The Highest Calorie Crop You Can Grow

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

For the first time since World War II, many Americans are worried about food security and are looking to level up their self-sufficiency game. In and of itself, this is a very good thing, but it's also a little problematic.

In this new victory garden movement, vegetable seedlings are being grabbed off the shelves as quickly as they arrive, without any planning or preparation. Many families are going to find out the hard way that food doesn’t just grow itself. Aside from work, self-sufficiency also takes a lot of strategizing.

Most of us vastly overestimate our ability to grow enough food to feed our families. While a dozen tomato and pepper plants may yield a huge harvest, can you live off of it? Definitely not.

This isn’t about eating picturesque heirloom vegetables on the porch, it’s about producing enough calories to make a dent in your nutritional needs. So let’s talk about calorie cropping – growing with the goal of providing calorie-rich food, preferably food you can store for several seasons. 

High-Calorie Crops

There are two ways of looking at the calorie potential of a crop: how many calories a harvest contains per pound, and how many calories you can produce per 100 square feet.

Consider this: In 100 square feet, you can grow 70 to 100 pounds of cabbage or you can grow seven pounds of peanuts. While the cabbage is about ten times more mass, it provides less than half the calories (a maximum of 18,000 calories for the peanuts versus 11,000 for the cabbage).

The same amount of space will yield up to 90 pounds of potatoes and a whopping 32,000 calories!

As you can see, if you're trying to feed your family, then you need to focus on the highest-calorie crops that require the least amount of space. Below is my list of suggestions: 

Potatoes

When it comes to the most calories in the least amount of space, potatoes are the big winner. Not only are they easy to grow, but they store well and can last a while in a root cellar.

Sweet potatoes are fantastic because they love hot weather and their greens are edible, nutritious, and plentiful in the hottest stretches of summer.      

Grain Corn     

Corn will give you a lot of bang for your buck – around 30,000 calories per 100 square feet! Buy non-GMO seed if you want to save seeds to plant the following year.

While this isn’t tasty sweet corn that you can eat off the cob, you can grind it into flour, which stores practically forever and can be used in many interesting ways.                                                                   

Wheat

Wheat is a surprisingly easy crop to grow, harvest, and use. You can produce around six pounds of wheat per 100 square feet – which means in 800 square feet you could grow enough to make a weekly loaf of bread for an entire year.

Better yet, you can plant it in the fall and let it grow over winter (instead of leaving your beds empty), then harvest in the early summer. If you have livestock, they can eat the straw left after harvest, and you can plant your next crop right into the stubble without plowing or tilling. 

Dry Beans

Beans are a must-have in the calorie-intensive garden. Do your research to find the varieties that perform best in your region, and you can expect between three and six pounds of beans per 100 square feet.

They mature more quickly than many other crops (in 7 to 10 weeks) and pack more than 1,500 calories per pound. Stored properly, they can last decades. 

Peanuts

If your climate is warm enough, this groundnut is a solid bet for a couple of key reasons. Peanuts are rich in protein and can be pressed to make oil for cooking.

They are also quite high in calories and require little maintenance or care for the 17 weeks it takes them to mature.  

Winter Squash

Pumpkins, butternut, acorn squash – these rich and delicious autumn harvests store well, produce a ton of mass per 100 square feet (50 to over 100 pounds) and store well over winter. 

Kale, Collards, and Cabbage

While not the most calorie-dense kids on the block, these guys have some exceptional qualities. Cabbage can overwinter in a root cellar, and can also be made into sauerkraut, which lasts for months and is full of probiotics.

Kale and collards give you calcium-rich greens through the winter months when fresh vegetables are in short supply. 

Fastest-Growing High-Calorie Crops

Okay, so let’s say you want to provide a lot of calories in a hurry. The bad news is that none of these crops are going to grow overnight. You are going to have to wait at least eight weeks.

Crops like kohlrabi, spinach, and radishes can provide a reasonably high number of calories in three to six weeks. Wheat is a slow crop that won’t provide you with anything until the following year, and corn is not much faster.

Root vegetables such as beets, carrots, and turnips offer a faster turnaround than the other crops listed, with a pretty good payoff in calories. If you have enough space, then by all means, grow a variety of faster-maturing crops to keep things interesting while you wait for your calorie-crops to mature. 

High-Calorie Growing Strategy

By far, the most comprehensive strategy I’ve come across for growing calories is the biointensive method. This growing method has been field-tested for decades and is used around the world to produce high yields using less water and space than conventional methods.

The biointensive rule of thumb is that it takes 2,000 square feet to produce a single person’s annual caloric needs, so take that into consideration when planning your garden. 

Making Calories Last Multiple Seasons

As far as producing a big chunk of the calories you need in your own garden, one thing that really increases capacity is food storage. Drying beans and grains is one thing, but that’s just the beginning. Greens can be dehydrated, vegetables can be canned, frozen, or pickled, and a good root cellar can keep produce for many months.

When you build up a supply, each year becomes progressively easier because you’ve got expanded capacity already built up.

Final Notes

I’ve provided a lot of examples of calorie crops to give you an idea of what is possible. For my own garden, if I were to focus on calories alone, I would primarily grow wheat, potatoes (sweet and regular), beans, and winter squash.

Wheat is easy to grow, so you can plant it and more or less forget about it. Potatoes are prolific and effortless to produce (if I could only grow one, this would be my top pick).

Beans give you plenty of fresh, green pods for instant gratification, and are a winter favorite around our house. And winter squash is versatile, delicious, and stores well.

Don’t let any of this discourage you. Even if you don’t have the space or gardening know-how to grow 100% of your own food,  at the very least you can supplement your diet with produce from your own garden. 

Originally published on Urban Survival Site.

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