15 Ways to Fortify Your Home Before All Hell Breaks Loose

Estimated reading time: 13 minutes

Your home is your fortress, and it is your first and most important line of defense against anyone who intends to do you harm.

In the current world, locked doors and perhaps a home security system is more than enough to deter most burglars. However, disaster breeds desperation, and once the SHTF, many people will be willing to work a lot harder to enter a home if they think there is anything worth stealing inside.

Before disaster strikes, it’s important to have a plan in place for how to fortify your home in order to protect against burglars and looters. In this article, we’ll look at 13 things that you can do to fortify your home before all hell breaks loose.

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1. Reinforce Your Doors

Points of entry are obviously the weakest links in a home’s security and therefore must be thoroughly fortified. The unfortunate reality is that a single knob lock is not enough to deter a determined intruder for more than a couple of minutes.

A strike or two to the doorknob with a hammer is all it takes to render this type of lock useless. Knob locks can also easily and quietly be picked using something as simple as a knife.

To ensure that your doors are secure, you will want to equip them with deadbolts, reinforce the hinges with longer screws, reinforce the jamb with longer screws, and reinforce the strike plate with longer screws.

Here is some more information on how to fortify a door.

2. Reinforce Your Windows

Windows may not be designed to be a point of entry, but they are arguably an even weaker link in your home’s security than your doors since windows can easily be broken.

One solution for fortifying the windows in your home is to install metal security bars. If you’re worried about making your home look like a prison, you’ll be happy to know that many window security bars come in decorative designs that won’t ruin the aesthetics of your home.

Another option is to cover your windows with security film. This transparent film prevents windows from shattering when they are struck. Keep in mind that glass doors present the same security issues as windows and must also be reinforced in the same manner if you really want to fortify your home.

3. Install An Alarm System

In many instances, the sound of an alarm going off is enough to scare away would-be intruders. In an SHTF scenario, though, the sound of an alarm by itself is probably not going to be enough of a deterrent.

With that said, alarm systems serve a second, even more critical function: alerting the occupants of the home when someone tries to break in.

Many people mistakenly assume that they will be able to hear an intruder breaking in even if they are sound asleep. While this might be true in some instances such as an intruder trying to kick down your front door, there are many instances where intruders are able to break in without making much noise at all. If you are even somewhat of a sound sleeper, the problem is even more exaggerated.

With an alarm system installed, you can ensure that any break-in attempt will be met with piercing noise that alerts everyone in the house. This can provide you with the precious seconds you need to arm yourself and address the threat.

There are plenty of home security systems, such as SimpliSafe, that have a battery backup and will continue working even during an extended power outage.

4. Block Off Your Chimney

Few people ever consider their chimney as they plan to fortify their home. However, if an intruder is desperate enough, entering a home via the chimney isn’t out of the question. It’s no doubt a risky and somewhat tricky maneuver, but shimmying down a chimney is possible if the chimney is large enough and the intruder is small enough. To prevent this from happening, you may want to consider blocking off your chimney.

There are several different products on the market designed to close off the top of a chimney, many of which are able to secure the chimney while still allowing smoke to escape.

5. Secure Your Garage Door

In most cases, intruders won’t be able to access your home through your garage since they have to get through both the garage door and the door into the house.

With that said, it is still essential to secure your garage if you plan on storing any supplies or valuable items in it. Even if you leave your garage empty, securing your garage door still provides an extra layer of defense for your home.

There a number of products you can purchase to fortify your garage door and make it impossible to force open from the outside. These products include things such as lock kits, door stops, and fortification bars that you can attach to your garage door.

Here's how to secure your garage door.

6. Plant Deterring Plants Underneath Your Windows

Windows may be the weakest point in a home from a security standpoint, but they do take some effort to enter. Suffice it to say that it isn’t all that easy to break a window, hoist yourself up onto the ledge, and climb inside when there is a cactus or a thorny rose bush planted beneath the window.

This method of fortifying your windows certainly isn’t fool-proof and should be combined with window security measures such as bars or security film. However, planting things such as cacti or other thorny plants underneath your windows can make life that much more difficult for an intruder who plans to enter your home through a window.

Check out this list of plants for home security.

7. Put a Fence Around Your Property

Putting a fence around your property provides you with an outer layer of defense that an intruder must conquer before he is ever able to reach your home. Most privacy fences are relatively easy to scale, though, so you will need to be selective about the type of fence that you choose.

There are several different qualities that a good security fence should exhibit. First and most importantly, a good security fence needs to be difficult to climb. This means you will want to choose a fence that is at least eight feet tall, has few if any horizontal rails, and is spiked or pointed at the top.

A good security fence also needs to be difficult to bypass. This means securing your fence to the ground with concrete and equipping it with a padlocked gate. Lastly, you will want to choose a fence that you are able to see through in order to prevent intruders from being able to hide behind it.

There are a number of metal security fences that fit all of these qualifications while still being decorative enough to not stand out in an urban neighborhood.

8. Fortify Your Walls

Very few break-ins involve busting through the wall of a home. However, if someone decides to open fire on your home, drywall and wooden studs are not going to do much to stop bullets from shredding through your walls.

The bad news is that the only way to really fortify your walls is to have walls that are made of stone or brick on the outside. If you live in a stone or brick house already, you don’t have to worry too much about your walls being a weak point. If you don’t have stone or brick walls, though, you’ll need to have a plan in place in the event that someone decides to open fire on your house.

Here is how to make your home bulletproof.

9. Install Outdoor Security Lighting

One of the simplest yet most effective ways to deter intruders is to make them feel like they’re being watched, and nothing does that better than a bright spotlight. Criminals prefer to work in the shadows where they won’t be seen. Motion-activated outdoor lights eliminate those shadows and force would-be intruders to think twice before approaching your home.

Place motion-sensor lights near all possible points of entry, especially back doors, side windows, and garage areas. Solar-powered options are great for off-grid readiness, and you can even find models with battery backups in case the power goes out.

Lighting by itself won’t stop an intruder, but it will make them a lot more nervous, and sometimes that’s enough to send them looking for an easier target.

10. Use Security Cameras

In a full collapse scenario, you may not be able to count on law enforcement to respond to security camera footage, but that doesn’t mean the cameras are useless.

Visible security cameras (even cheap or fake ones) serve as a powerful psychological deterrent. Intruders are far more likely to avoid a home that looks like it's being monitored. Better yet, real security cameras can provide early warning if they are paired with a motion sensor and app notification system.

If you can’t afford a full camera setup, grab a few realistic dummy cameras and place them near common entry points. They won’t catch anyone on film, and some burglars might recognize that they're fake, but many won't, and that will be enough to stop them from trying to break in.

11. Remove Potential Climbing Aids

Your home may be well-secured at ground level, but have you ever looked around your yard for things that could help someone climb?

Items like stacked firewood, trash bins, trellises, sheds, and even decorative latticework can all act as ladders for a determined intruder. A tall fence won’t help much if there’s a step stool sitting right next to it.

Walk the perimeter of your home and identify anything an intruder could use to reach higher windows, balconies, or the roof. Either remove those items or secure them in a way that makes them unusable. This is especially important for homes with second-story windows that are otherwise hard to reach.

12. Secure Your Attic Access

Most people don’t think about the attic as a vulnerability, but in certain homes, especially two-story ones, it absolutely can be. Some homes have attic access points in the garage, outside the main living area, or even with cheap panel doors that can easily be kicked in from inside the house.

If someone does manage to get into your attic from the outside (say, via a neighboring structure or a tree), they could potentially drop down into your home unnoticed.

To prevent this, secure any attic entry points with locks or reinforced panels. If your attic access is in the garage, consider installing a lockable cover or even moving the access indoors if possible. It’s not a common attack route, but all it takes is one determined intruder to exploit it.

13. Keep a Low Profile

All the reinforced doors and security bars in the world won’t do you much good if you’re advertising that your home is worth breaking into. In an SHTF scenario, desperate people will be looking for the homes that seem to have the most to offer, and you don’t want yours to be one of them.

This starts long before disaster strikes. Break down the boxes from big purchases like TVs, generators, and bulk food orders before putting them out with the trash. Don’t post photos of your stockpile or your gear on social media, and be careful about how much you share with friends and coworkers.

Once the power goes out, keeping a low profile becomes even more important. If your house is the only one on the block with lights on, a humming generator, and the smell of cooking food drifting out the windows, you’re going to draw attention. Hang blackout curtains, run any generators sparingly, and try to make your home look just as dark and hungry as everyone else’s.

The goal is to make would-be looters walk right past your house without giving it a second thought.

14. Get to Know Your Neighbors

One family can only keep watch for so many hours a day. Eventually, you have to sleep, and that’s when your home is most vulnerable. This is why one of the best ways to fortify your home is to make sure you’re not defending it alone.

Take the time to get to know the people who live around you now, while things are still normal. You’ll quickly figure out who is trustworthy, who has useful skills, and who might be willing to work together if things go south. You don’t have to tell them about your preps. Simply being on good terms is enough to build a foundation.

When disaster strikes, a group of neighbors can take turns keeping watch, share information about suspicious activity, and even block off access to the street if things get bad enough. Looters are far less likely to target a neighborhood where people are clearly watching out for one another.

A fortified home is good, but a fortified neighborhood is even better.

15. Keep Firearms Accessible

In many cases, the best defense is a good offense. While all of the tips discussed in the previous sections will make it very difficult for an intruder to enter your home, there is no way to make an ordinary house impossible to break into unless you have an enormous amount of money to spend and don’t mind your home looking like a prison.

Fortifying your home may be enough to convince most intruders to try for an easier target, but it isn’t going to stop someone who is hell-bent on entering your home. Given the right tools and enough time, a determined intruder will eventually be able to break into your home no matter how well fortified it might be.

When and if this happens, you will either have to hide away or meet the threat head-on. In both cases, it is essential that you are armed. Hiding away in a locked bathroom in the hopes that the intruder will simply steal all of your stuff and leave is both a risky gamble and a good way to lose everything you own.

Even if you do decide to hide once an intruder enters your home, you’ll still want to have a firearm on you in case they enter your hiding place. Of course, trying to confront an intruder without a firearm is an even more deadly risk.

Once you have fortified your home, make sure that you keep at least one firearm that is loaded and easily accessible. It may be your last line of defense, but a firearm is also the only defense capable of stopping an intruder who is willing to do whatever it takes to get inside your home.

Here's our list of the best guns for home defense.

Conclusion

As I said, if a criminal is determined enough, he will find a way into your home. However, there are other things you can do to make it more difficult for him. For example, you could get a dog (or dogs), a decoy safe so your most valuable things don't get stolen, or you could build a safe room so you can at least keep your family from harm.

Here are some more home security tips for life after SHTF.

You May Also Like:

• 11 Home Security Tips for Life After SHTF
• 21 Common Home Security Mistakes
• 7 Best Plants for Home Security
• Fortifying Suburbs And Communities After SHTF
• 7 Tips For Traveling Through Dangerous Areas

The post 15 Ways to Fortify Your Home Before All Hell Breaks Loose appeared first on Urban Survival Site.

from Urban Survival Site

The Importance of Ammunition Reliability for Preppers

A prepper’s equipment rarely attracts much attention when it works exactly as expected. Ammunition poses a particular challenge, though: its condition and performance aren’t always fully visible during an ordinary equipment check. A cartridge can look perfectly normal while leaving unanswered questions about how it will function after months or years in storage.

That makes ammunition reliability an important consideration when building and maintaining an emergency supply. Price, bullet design, caliber, and range performance each provide part of the picture, but none tells the whole story.

For preppers, the larger question is simple: Can you depend on the ammunition you have stored when replacing it may no longer be easy?

What Reliability Means in an Emergency

Reliability should be one of the first considerations when selecting ammunition for emergency preparedness. It means considering firearm function and ammunition performance separately, then storing and periodically inspecting your supply so that problems are more likely to be discovered before an emergency.

Neither a recognizable brand name nor a standout range test substitutes for that process.

A failure to fire or feed can turn otherwise functional equipment into a problem at exactly the wrong time. In an emergency, there may also be no convenient opportunity to purchase another box of ammunition or replace questionable cartridges.

The relevant reliability standard is therefore repeatable function rather than an impressive result from a small number of rounds.

Compatibility matters as well. Different firearms can behave differently with the same ammunition, particularly when bullet shapes, cartridge dimensions, magazines, and firearm designs vary.

Preppers should also think beyond what happens at the range. Ammunition kept for emergencies may remain stored considerably longer than ammunition purchased for routine shooting. Heat, moisture, repeated handling, and poor storage conditions can all become concerns over time.

A sensible preparedness plan therefore includes proper storage, periodic inspection, and stock rotation rather than simply buying ammunition and forgetting about it.

Choosing Ammunition for a Preparedness Stockpile

A preparedness stockpile needs a standard beyond price or brand preference. Ammunition should be appropriate for the firearms you own and sufficiently dependable that you aren’t discovering compatibility problems after an emergency has already begun.

This is particularly important when consolidating a preparedness collection around a small number of commonly available calibers. Standardization can simplify storage, inventory, and replacement while reducing the number of different cartridges that need to be kept on hand.

Reliability also involves the firearm itself. Ammunition, magazines, and firearm maintenance all contribute to dependable operation, so a malfunction shouldn’t automatically be blamed on the cartridge.

Why Simple Firearms Have Long Appealed to Preppers

Revolvers have long appealed to some preparedness-minded gun owners partly because their operation avoids the magazine-fed cycling sequence of a semi-automatic pistol. Their advantage isn’t that ammunition failures become impossible. Rather, the firearm presents a different set of reliability considerations.

Historically, that simplicity helped make revolvers attractive wherever straightforward operation and long-term dependability were priorities.

Semi-automatic pistols provide different advantages, including greater magazine capacity and faster reloading. They also make compatibility among ammunition, magazines, and the firearm an important consideration.

For preppers, there isn’t necessarily one universally correct choice. The more useful question is whether the firearm and ammunition combination you intend to depend on has demonstrated consistent operation before it becomes part of your emergency supplies.

Defensive Ammunition and Performance

Modern defensive ammunition commonly includes jacketed hollow-point loads, particularly in popular handgun calibers such as 9mm. Evaluating this ammunition involves two separate questions: whether the cartridges function reliably in a particular firearm and whether the projectile provides the intended performance.

Testing standards such as the FBI protocol can provide useful information about projectile performance under controlled conditions, including tests involving clothing and other intermediate barriers.

However, favorable projectile testing doesn’t establish that a particular load will function equally well in every firearm.

Established defensive loads such as Speer Gold Dot, Federal HST Ammo, and Winchester Ranger T-Series have been designed with performance through varying conditions in mind. For preparedness purposes, though, published performance data should complement rather than replace firsthand knowledge of how ammunition behaves with the firearm in which it will be used.

What Happens When Stored Ammunition Deteriorates

Ammunition is often stored for long periods, which makes storage conditions an important part of preparedness.

Modern ammunition can remain usable for many years when properly stored, but that doesn’t mean every cartridge in a stockpile should automatically be assumed reliable forever. Moisture, corrosion, physical damage, extreme temperatures, and repeated handling can introduce uncertainty.

A preparedness stockpile should therefore be treated as usable inventory rather than a collection that is sealed away and ignored indefinitely.

Older ammunition can be periodically inspected and rotated into appropriate range use while newer ammunition replaces it in the reserve. This approach helps maintain familiarity with the ammunition while preventing a stockpile from consisting entirely of cartridges that haven’t been examined in years.

Storage Is Part of Ammunition Reliability

Where and how ammunition is stored matters almost as much as what is purchased.

A cool, dry, and relatively stable environment is preferable to locations exposed to significant moisture or temperature swings. Ammunition containers should also protect cartridges from unnecessary exposure and physical damage.

Organization matters too.

Clearly identifying caliber and other relevant ammunition information can prevent confusion when multiple firearms or cartridge types are stored together. Keeping track of purchases and rotating older stock first can make a large ammunition reserve easier to manage.

The objective isn’t to create an unnecessarily complicated inventory system. It is to know what you have, where it is, and whether its condition has changed.

Reliability Matters More When Resupply Isn’t Guaranteed

Under ordinary circumstances, questionable ammunition can be replaced. During an extended emergency, natural disaster, supply disruption, or other crisis, that assumption may no longer hold.

That changes the value of reliability.

A box of ammunition that doesn’t work properly isn’t merely an inconvenience when the nearest replacement may be unavailable. The same principle applies to magazines, firearm maintenance supplies, and other equipment that becomes harder to replace once normal supply chains are interrupted.

Preparedness is partly about identifying those dependencies before they become problems.

That doesn’t necessarily mean accumulating the largest possible quantity of ammunition. A smaller, well-maintained supply that has been stored properly and is known to work with the firearms on hand may be more useful than a much larger collection of unknown condition and compatibility.

Dependable Ammunition Is Part of Being Prepared

Ammunition reliability isn’t a promise that every emergency will unfold predictably. It is one part of reducing avoidable uncertainty.

For preppers, that means thinking beyond caliber and quantity. Ammunition should be compatible with the firearms it is intended for, stored under suitable conditions, periodically inspected, and managed as part of the broader preparedness inventory.

When normal access to stores, replacement equipment, and supply chains can’t be taken for granted, knowing that your existing supplies have been properly maintained becomes considerably more important.

The best time to discover a problem with stored ammunition is long before you actually need to depend on it.

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The post The Importance of Ammunition Reliability for Preppers appeared first on Ask a Prepper.

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Why Your Steak Keeps Getting More Expensive, And Why Prices Won’t Drop Anytime Soon

I can walk into a grocery store today and still find a cooler full of beef, with steaks and roasts stacked where they have always been. Nothing about that display looks like a shortage, which is exactly why cattle numbers are so easy to ignore. The shelves show what is available today. They do not […]

from Survivopedia

72-Hour Kit Checklist: What to Pack for Your Family

A practical, mom-to-mom guide to building a 72-hour kit for every member of your family, with real-world tips from people who've used theirs and cold-weather upgrades for winter storm season.

The post 72-Hour Kit Checklist: What to Pack for Your Family appeared first on The Survival Mom.

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I Taste-Tested Survival Food From the 1990s. Here’s How It Held Up

Last spring, I bought a few acres one town over, along with the old house on them. The man who owned it had passed away, and his family sold the place with the root cellar dug into the hillside out back. I knew him a little from the feed store, a quiet fellow who never threw anything away. And once we pried the cellar door open, we found shelves of food he’d stored over three decades, from a case of ’90s MREs to home-canned jars with his handwriting on the lids. My wife took one look and asked if I was hauling it all to the dump.

I told her I’d taste some of it first. That man put real work into those shelves, and I didn’t want it wasted without a fair try. I wanted to know what food stored for decades actually tastes like, and whether any of it would keep a family going in a pinch.

So I spent a couple of Saturdays going through what he’d left behind, nose first and then mouth. Some of it held up better than I expected. Some of it went straight in the trash, and I’ll tell you why.

Eating 30-Year-Old Military MREs

The case had a date code of 6045 stamped on the side. MRE cases use a Julian date, so the first digit is the year and the next three are the day. That put these meals at February 14, 1996, the same era of rations our troops carried in Bosnia.

I picked a beef stew menu and checked the entree pouch before anything else. It lay flat, with no puffing and no oily residue on the outside. The stew looked darker than I remembered, and the potatoes had gone soft as baby food. Still, it smelled like beef stew, and the flavor came through mostly intact.

But the crackers didn’t fare nearly as well, since they tasted like the cardboard box they came in and broke into dust. The cheese spread had turned tan and grainy, though it still tasted like cheese.

Then came the pound cake, which surprised me most. It crumbled the second I tore the pouch, dry and stale like an old sponge. So I broke it into a bowl and poured cold milk over it. After about five minutes, it softened up and tasted close to vanilla cake, and I finished the bowl.

Mind you, that case lasted on luck as much as packaging, and half the menu tasted like the box it came in. Plus, fresh military MREs with years of shelf life left cost a small fortune today, and you get no say over what goes inside. 

The better move is to keep these 7 MREs in your stockpile, packed after the military “one meal or one day” rule. That means you can build a single-meal pack around the numbers of a real Army MRE, which provides about 1,285 calories, including 40 grams of protein, 176 grams of carbohydrates, and 47 grams of fat. 

And a full-day pack can match the Army’s First Strike Ration, where each FSR (food for 24 hours) provides around 2,900 calories, including 91 grams of protein, 421 grams of carbohydrates, and 98 grams of fat. Better yet, you pick every item yourself, so your family will actually eat what’s in the bag. 

Here’s how to do it:

Tasting 17-Year-Old Homemade Pemmican

He’d made two batches of pemmican and marked both tubs 2009 in black marker. They sat sealed on the lowest shelf, in the coolest corner of the cellar. The first was plain, just lean beef dried hard, pounded to powder, and mixed with rendered beef tallow. The second had dried blueberries and cranberries worked in for flavor.

Thankfully, the plain batch still looked the way he must have packed it, a dense, pale brown brick. I shaved off a piece with my pocketknife and let it warm up in my mouth. It tasted like strong beef jerky with a waxy coating, and the tallow left a faint stale note at the back of my throat. I wouldn’t serve it at a family dinner, but I’d eat it without complaint if needed.

The fruit batch, though, failed the smell test the moment I popped the lid. A sour, almost winey smell came off it, and the fat had a sharp rancid edge, so I set it aside without tasting it.

That plain brick held up for 17 years with nothing but dried beef and fat holding it together. No wonder fur traders and Arctic explorers trusted pemmican to carry them through months with no other food in their packs.

To make pemmican that lasts that long in your own pantry, start with the original 1743 pemmican recipe and follow it the way the trappers did, ratios and all. Find the full recipe here. Then give the berries their own sealed bag, and mix them in the day you eat. 

Franco-American Canned Pasta From the Late ’90s

Anyone who grew up on canned pasta remembers Franco-American. Campbell’s dropped the name from its pasta in 2004, so the cans on his shelf had to be older than that, and you won’t find that label in a store today. He had a can of their macaroni and cheese and a can of Superiore beef ravioli tucked behind the newer stuff.

The macaroni can looked clean, with no rust on the seams and no swelling on either end. It opened the way a good can should, with no spurt of liquid and no sour smell. Inside, the sauce had darkened from bright orange to a muddy brownish color. And the noodles had soaked up so much liquid they mashed against the roof of my mouth like paste.

Still, I heated it in a pot and gave it a fair shot. The cheese flavor was weak, but it tasted like food, with a mild metallic aftertaste. My kids would’ve turned their nose up at it, though a hungry man in a bad winter would clean the bowl.

Store-bought canned pasta loses a lot over the years, and that macaroni came out mushy with a metallic aftertaste. You’ll get a much better meal by keeping your pasta dry and canning the hearty part yourself.

That’s where this famous Poor Man’s Steak recipe comes in, since you can put up a few jars of it before the cold sets in. Then just pour a jar over some freshly boiled pasta, and you’ve got a real meal when SHTF, or simply on a cold winter evening after work.

Home-Canned Food After 12 and 13 Years

The old man kept a big garden, and the cellar held a few dozen jars he’d canned over the years. Some were labeled 2013 and 2014 in his shaky handwriting, and those were the only ones I tasted. For each one, I checked that the lid stayed concave and didn’t flex when I pressed the center.

The pressure-canned green beans from 2013 had faded to an olive drab color and turned soft. Low-acid home-canned food can carry botulism without any smell or swelling, so I boiled them hard for ten minutes before tasting. After that, they tasted like ordinary canned green beans, just mushier, and a pat of butter fixed most of it.

As for the 2014 peaches, they held up better than anything else I tried. The fruit at the top of the jar had browned, and the syrup had turned amber. Even so, they were sweet and soft, and my wife ate a few slices with me straight from the jar.

Those green beans came out soft and olive drab because pressure canning cooks them once in the jar, and the years on a shelf keep softening them after that. The peaches hid it under sweet syrup, but plain vegetables have nothing to hide behind.

Freeze-drying solves that problem, and you don’t need a store-bought machine that costs thousands to do it. With the homemade freeze-drier that keeps food for 25+ years, your garden beans hold on to their color and flavor, and they take up a fraction of the shelf space a row of jars would.

A Nice Surprise…

Behind the jars, he’d lined up a few wicker-wrapped demijohns and some green corked bottles, each dated on masking tape. Turns out the old man made his own wine, from a 2016 bottle to a 2024 jug.

The 2016 cork crumbled halfway out, since the bottle had stood upright for years and let air creep in. The wine had turned brick-brown and tasted flat and nutty, like cheap sherry, so now my wife cooks with it.

The 2024 jug had its cork sealed under wax, and it poured bright red and tasted fruity, if a little rough. We each finished a glass that evening, and these days any wine we store goes on its side with a dip of wax over the cork.

The Old Food I Wouldn’t Touch, and Why

That Franco-American ravioli can had both ends domed outward. If I pressed one end down, the other popped up, and that’s a sign gas built up inside from bacterial growth. So it went into a doubled trash bag without being opened, since even a spray of that liquid on your hands can make you sick.

Two of the MRE entree pouches had also puffed up like little pillows. The rest of the case looked fine, but I wasn’t about to gamble on a swollen pouch from 1996. And I already told you about the fruit pemmican, which smelled bad enough to settle the question.

Then there were about a dozen jars with no label at all. Some looked like green beans and some looked like stew meat, but I couldn’t tell when he canned them. More important, I couldn’t tell whether he’d pressure-canned them or used a water bath, and low-acid food done in a water bath is a botulism risk. I dumped every one of those jars, even the ones with good seals.

What This Taste Test Taught Me About Long-Term Food Storage

My wife still thinks I’m a little crazy for eating a 30-year-old beef stew. But that old man’s cellar showed me how our own stored food will hold up over the years. And I’d like to think he’d be glad it all got a fair try. 

So after two Saturdays in that cellar, I changed a few things about how we store food at home:

• Boil low-acid home-canned food before you eat it. Botulism gives you no smell and no bulge to warn you, but ten minutes at a rolling boil destroys the toxin. That’s why it’s mandatory to learn the 5 early signs of botulism poisoning now, while you still have a doctor to call.
• Mark every jar with the canning method. Our lids now get the contents, the year, and PC or WB for pressure canner or water bath. A jar of green beans marked WB goes straight in the trash, since a water bath can’t kill botulism spores in low-acid food. 
• Keep fruit and fat apart. The plain pemmican outlasted the berry batch by years, because the fruit brought in moisture and sugar that turned the tallow rancid. 
• Store food where you’d want to sleep in July. The military rates MREs for about 130 months at 60°F, yet at 100°F that drops below two years. That case survived because a hillside cellar holds a steady temperature. If your land is flat, the backyard cellar that stays cool all summer can do the same job without a hill.
• Put the oldest food up front. Those Franco-American cans sat behind newer stuff for over 20 years. Now new cans go in from the back, and we always eat from the front. Better yet, build the gravity shelf that rotates cans for you and you’ll never lose a can behind the others again.
• Keep pasta dry and add the sauce later. Dry pasta in a sealed bucket holds its texture for decades, and a can of sauce beside it gives you the same meal. Also, stock these 4 shelf-stable sauces that last for years, and a bucket of noodles turns into a real supper.
• Stock something to soak old food in. That stale pound cake came back to life after five minutes in milk; same with crackers in broth. That’s why we keep powdered milk next to the long-term food. Even the Civil War hardtack that never spoils turns soft and filling once you drop it in a hot bowl of broth.
• Check your shelves on a schedule. Twice a year, I press every can end and jar lid, and I make sure each pouch still lies flat. 
• Eat your oldest can once a year. Each fall, we open the oldest thing in the house and have it for supper. It shows us how food ages in our own basement, and it keeps the rotation from slipping.

 Build a Stockpile That Holds Up

That old man spent 30 years filling those shelves, and still a good share of his work went straight to the dump.

So to make sure every jar you seal this fall is still safe to open in 2050, you can learn the old preserving methods in The Lost Frontier Handbook and avoid the mistakes that quietly spoil a stockpile.

This way you will learn:

• How to make the 100-year survival ration fur trappers and Arctic explorers carried for months with no other food
• 3 ways to keep food cold through a summer blackout, from a root cellar to a long-lost evaporation trick
• How to smoke and cure meat, so a deer you take in November still feeds you in May
• The Civil War biscuit that won’t go bad in any climate, and softens into a filling meal once you soak it in broth
• The food-spoiling dangers that can wipe out a pantry, so you catch them while the rest of the shelf is still good

As for that cellar, it’s filling back up with our own jars, each one marked with the year and PC or WB on the lid. So if somebody pries that door open in 2056, they won’t have to guess what’s safe to eat.

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The post I Taste-Tested Survival Food From the 1990s. Here’s How It Held Up appeared first on Ask a Prepper.

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