There is an awful lot to appreciate about ducks: their gracefulness on the water, their agility in flight, and of course, the magnificent beauty of their feathers. Ducks, whether wild or domestic, come in every color of the rainbow and patterns ranging from the subtle to the mesmerizing. Some of them are a riot of ... Read more
19 Duck Breeds That Have White and Brown Plumage can be read in full at New Life On A Homestead- Be sure to check it out!
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
When it comes to emergency preparedness, most of us understand the importance of protein. It's one of the main reasons preppers and homesteaders raise chickens and other livestock. Protein is an essential part of a balanced diet, and it's imperative for surviving off the grid and becoming more self-sufficient.
Thanks to the recent pandemic, many people have stopped and looked at how much food they keep in their homes and whether it can sustain them for a long time. While some people hunt or raise animals for their supply of protein, most of us need to simply stock up on canned meat.
Shelf-stable protein options are important to have in your home. There are all kinds of canned meats out there. Some are great, some are kind of weird, and some are downright disgusting. In this article, we're going to list the best canned meats that you should stockpile so you'll have plenty of protein when the grid goes down.
A can of chili has both meat and beans that provide a lot of protein. You can choose to stockpile chili with or without beans, but either choice will give you a ton of flavor in a ready-to-eat meal. We like this pack of Wolf Brand Spicy Chili.
Well known in many parts of the world, SPAM is a shelf-stable protein option that has earned its place on your stockpile shelf. It is relatively cheap and full of protein that is edible right out of the can.
SPAM is best served when fried, which should be easy to do if you’re in a survival situation and already have the fire going. It's also very affordable, especially if you get a 12-pack.
This variety of Mary Kitchen Corn Beef Hash from Hormel is a good option for preppers looking for a one-stop meal. Each can is 14 ounces, and they come in packs of 12. What's great about this canned meat is it also comes with potatoes and seasonings to brighten up any meal.
Whether you choose tuna in oil or water, loading up on cans of this important meat is important. A can of tuna is not only small, which means you can store more of it, but it also is a great way to mix up the monotony of protein choices that you have on hand. As a lean fish, tuna includes omega-3 fatty acids, which are vital to overall health.
Tuna sometimes comes in large packs, like this 48 count pack of Starkist Canned Tuna. Try mixing up your stockpile with the newer tuna foil packets that come in different flavors like lemon pepper or sweet and spicy. While you can get the flavored tuna in large bulk orders, this smaller variety 4 pack is worth considering if you just want to try it out.
Another great canned meat is canned chicken breast. Chicken can sometimes be a bit on the weary side of the canned meat section, but this set of Kirkland Canned Chicken tastes and looks great. The big chunks of chicken are easy to eat or add to a meal, and each can is 12.5 ounces.
Keystone Meats is a well-known Ohio based meat company that produces great all-natural meat options to add to your stockpile. They have a wide variety of different meats and flavors that usually come in a 14.5-ounce can. You can purchase this meat online but usually find them cheaper in stores around your local area.
To help add some variety to your meat stockpile, consider picking up a case of these La Preferida Beef & Pork Tamales. Each can is 15 ounces and includes enough spices to create a delicious meal that is a bit different from the rest. These also come in packs of 12.
Some of the best canned meats are the ones that can add protein to any kind of dish. Vienna Sausage is one of those options that can be eaten by itself or sliced and added to breakfast, lunch, or dinner. We like this box of Libby’s Vienna Sausage on Amazon that weighs a total of 5 pounds.
Opening a can for a complete meal is a good option for preppers. Dinty Moore Beef Stew comes in a 15-ounce can that includes the beef as well as potatoes and vegetables. Warm up the can and add in some water to make a comforting meal even in the worst of times.
Related Article: 10 Ways to Store Meat Without a Refrigerator
When choosing to can your own meat that you either raised on the farm or have harvested yourself, it is vital to learn how to do it correctly to not accidentally harm yourself or your family. Meat is a low acid food, making it the perfect spot for bacteria to grow when canned.
Canning your own meats is a process that can include the whole family. You should be able to can any kind of meat that you raise including chicken, pork, beef, rabbit, and venison. Many preppers also choose to can their own pickled versions of protein like pickled eggs, which can come in handy in a survival situation.
No matter what kind of meat you choose to can, make sure that you research how to make it and can it so that the end product is safe and healthy to eat months or even years down the road.
Protein is an essential part of any emergency stockpile. Meat is an important part of any balanced diet and is a needed component when surviving in an SHTF situation. Stock up on your meat storage by choosing any or all of these canned meats for preppers.
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Beef Prices: They Are Going To Get Worse! If you’ve stood at the meat counter lately and felt your stomach drop at the price of ground beef, you’re not imagining things. Beef has become one of the most expensive items in the grocery cart, and unfortunately, the honest answer is that prices are likely to climb even higher before they come back down. As a mom who has spent years thinking about food storage and feeding a family on a budget, I wanted to dig into why this is happening. It isn’t just one problem. There are several problems stacked on top of each other, and ranchers are caught in the middle of it all. Cast Iron Dutch Oven (Indoors Only). Outdoors: Lodge Dutch Oven. Traeger Grills Instant Read Meat Thermometer.
The simplest explanation is supply and demand. The United States cattle herd has shrunk to its smallest size in about 75 years, and persistent drought, rising costs, and an aging ranching workforce have pushed grocery prices up sharply, with beef climbing roughly 20 percent in a single year. When there are fewer cattle available, and just as many or more people wanting to buy beef, prices rise. That’s exactly what’s happened.
Right now, roughly three-quarters of the entire U.S. beef cow herd is sitting in a drought zone, compared with a long-term average closer to 20 percent. That’s an enormous difference, and it explains a lot about why ranchers are struggling.
Cattle ranching starts with grass. Grass needs rain. When the rain doesn’t come, the grass doesn’t grow, and ranchers are left with dry, brittle pastures that can’t feed a herd. Many ranching families depend on wells for both their cattle and their households, and in areas hit hardest by drought, those wells are running dry or producing far less water than they once did.
When pasture and water disappear, ranchers are forced into an impossible choice. They either spend a fortune trucking in water and hay from somewhere else, or they sell off cattle early, sometimes selling breeding females they’d normally keep for years to come. Expansion of the herd is likely to stay small, if it happens at all, heading into next year.
This is a slow-moving disaster. A rancher can’t simply flip a switch and grow more cattle once the rain returns. Breeding decisions have to be made years in advance. A calf born today won’t become the steak on your plate for a couple of years. So even if it started raining tomorrow, it would take a long time for the extra supply to show up at the grocery store.
Drought is only part of the story. The other part is the rising cost of everything a rancher needs to keep cattle alive and healthy. Fertilizer prices have climbed due to supply chain disruptions, and that fertilizer is what helps grow the hay and feed crops that cattle depend on, especially when pastures are too dry to graze. When fertilizer costs more, feed costs more. When feed costs more, it costs more to keep every single animal on the ranch.
Add to that the price of replacement cattle, which is currently about 100 percent above the twenty-year average, and you can see why so many ranchers are hesitant to grow their herds even when beef prices are historically high. It sounds strange, but many ranching operations are losing money or barely breaking even, even while beef sits at record prices in the store. Packer margins have been running negative, between $200 and $300 per head, which shows just how thin things have become throughout the supply chain.
You might wonder why ranchers don’t just take advantage of high prices and grow bigger herds. The honest answer is risk. Keeping more young female cattle for breeding means committing to feeding, watering, and caring for them for years before they produce a single calf that can be sold. With dry pastures, high interest rates, rising land prices, and no guarantee that the drought will ease, that’s simply too risky for many families to take on.
Land itself has also become incredibly expensive. In some ranching regions, the average price of farmland and pasture land has climbed 400 percent over the last twenty years, making it nearly impossible for a young rancher to buy in. That’s pushed many younger generations away from ranching altogether, leaving fewer hands to do this difficult work and fewer new operations to help rebuild the national herd.
Put all of this together, and you get a picture that’s hard to hear. Fewer cattle. Higher land and water costs. Higher fertilizer and feed costs. An aging group of ranchers with fewer young people stepping in to replace them. Beef prices are expected to stay elevated for years, not months, because rebuilding a national cattle herd simply can’t happen quickly.
This doesn’t mean beef will disappear from our tables, but it does mean many of us will need to adjust how we shop, cook, and stock our pantries. Buying cheaper cuts, learning to stretch beef with rice, beans, and vegetables, watching for sales and stocking up when prices dip, and considering other proteins like chicken, pork, eggs, or beans more often are all practical ways to soften the blow to a family budget.
I also think this is a good reminder of why food storage matters so much. When you see sales on beef, even smaller sales, that’s the time to buy extra and preserve it, whether by freezing, canning, or dehydrating. Building a supply when prices dip a little can help protect your family when prices climb again.
I want to say something directly to the ranching families reading this. I know this article focuses on numbers and supply chains, but behind every statistic is a family working incredibly hard, often for very little reward, to keep food on all of our tables. Many ranchers are watching wells their grandparents dug run dry, selling off cattle they hoped to keep, and wondering whether the next generation will even be able to continue the family operation. That’s not just an economic story. It is a story about resilience, faith, and hard work in the face of circumstances completely outside anyone’s control.
Ranchers are selling off their herds mainly because they’re running out of the two things a cattle operation depends on most: affordable water and affordable feed.
When drought dries up pastures, the grass that cattle normally graze on stops growing. Without grass, ranchers have two choices. They can buy hay and feed to replace what the land used to provide at a more reasonable cost, or they can reduce the size of their herd so there are fewer mouths to feed. Buying hay and feed from elsewhere is expensive, especially when it has to be trucked in from hundreds of miles away, and rising fertilizer costs have made it more expensive to grow that feed in the first place. For many ranchers, the math simply doesn’t work. It may cost more to keep a cow alive through a drought than that cow will earn them when it’s eventually sold.
Wells running dry make this even worse. Cattle need a steady source of water every single day, and so do the households living on the ranch. When a well that’s supplied a family for generations starts producing less water or stops altogether, there’s often no backup plan. Drilling a new well or hauling water in by truck is costly, and it’s not something every rancher can afford to do indefinitely.
There’s also a longer-term calculation happening. Breeding females, the cows ranchers keep specifically to produce next year’s calves, are the most valuable part of a herd for the future. But keeping them costs money every single day, for years, before they produce a calf that can be sold. When water and feed are scarce and expensive, and there’s no guarantee the drought will end soon, many ranchers decide it’s safer to sell those breeding females now rather than gamble on being able to feed them through an uncertain future. This is called herd liquidation, and while it protects the rancher from immediate losses, it also means fewer calves being born in the years ahead, which is part of why the national herd has shrunk to its smallest size in about 75 years.
In short, ranchers aren’t selling because they want to. They’re selling because dry pastures, dry wells, and expensive feed have made it too risky and too costly to keep every animal fed and watered through conditions that show no sign of easing soon.
Telling where your beef actually came from is trickier than it should be, but here’s what you need to know as of right now.
There’s no mandatory country-of-origin label on beef packages today. That kind of labeling existed for a while, starting in 2009, but Canada and Mexico challenged it at the World Trade Organization, and Congress repealed it for beef and pork in 2015. So current rules don’t require a beef package to indicate where the animal was born, raised, or slaughtered.
There is some good news. As of January 1, 2026, the USDA tightened the meaning of the “Product of USA” label. Before this change, beef could carry a Product of the USA label as long as it was simply packaged in the United States, even if the animal itself was born and raised elsewhere. Now that label can only be used if the animal was born, raised, slaughtered, and processed here in the United States, start to finish. This is still a voluntary label, though, which means companies aren’t required to use it; if they choose to put it on the package, it must be true.
Look for the words Product of USA on the package and trust that, since January of this year, it now means the animal spent its entire life here, not just that it was packaged here.
Look for labels from smaller, known American ranches or cooperatives, since local and regional producers are far more likely to be transparent about exactly where their beef comes from, often listing the ranch or state right on the package.
Shop at a butcher counter or farmers market where you can simply ask, since a real butcher or a rancher selling directly to you can usually tell you exactly which farm or region the animal came from.
Watch for the USDA inspection stamp, which indicates the meat was processed at a USDA-inspected facility, though keep in mind this doesn’t, by itself, tell you where the animal was raised.
Be cautious with generic terms like “packaged in the USA” or “distributed by a US company,” since those phrases say nothing about where the animal actually lived, only where the box was filled or shipped from.
There is also a push in Congress right now to bring back mandatory country-of-origin labeling for all beef, not just the voluntary “Product of USA” claims. Ranching groups have been pushing hard for this because right now, four large meatpacking companies control the large majority of the beef industry, and many ranchers feel that shoppers can’t easily tell the difference between their beef and imported beef sitting right next to it on the shelf. Until that changes, your safest bet as a shopper is to look for the updated Product of USA label, buy directly from a local rancher or butcher when you can, and ask questions whenever you’re unsure.
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Beef prices aren’t going up because grocery stores are being greedy or because ranchers are getting rich. They’re going up because water is scarce, land and fertilizer cost more than ever, and America’s cattle herd is smaller than it has been in generations. Rebuilding that herd will take years, not months, so it’s wise for families to plan ahead, stock up when prices are low, and lean on a variety of other protein sources in the meantime. May God bless this world, Linda
The post Beef Prices: They Are Going To Get Worse appeared first on Food Storage Moms.
On March 16, 1988, the Iraqi government carried out one of the deadliest chemical weapons attacks against civilians in modern history in the Kurdish city of Halabja. Thousands of people, most of them civilians, died within hours, and thousands more were left with lifelong injuries. This is not a hypothetical scenario or a Hollywood plot device. It happened, it was documented by international investigators, and the people responsible were eventually tried for it.
This article covers what actually happened at Halabja, the chemical agents involved, the human and political aftermath, and then turns to something directly useful for preppers: what the public health and emergency response community actually recommends if you’re ever caught in a chemical exposure event, based on official CDC and OSHA guidance rather than movies or internet rumor.
By 1988, Iraq and Iran had been locked in a brutal war for nearly eight years, one of the longest and bloodiest conventional conflicts of the twentieth century. Iraq’s government, led by Saddam Hussein, had also been waging a separate, parallel campaign against its own Kurdish population in the north of the country, a scorched-earth operation known as the Anfal campaign, led by Iraqi military and Ba’ath Party official Ali Hassan al-Majid.
Halabja sat in Iraqi Kurdistan, close to the Iranian border. Two days before the attack, Iranian forces captured the town as part of a broader military operation, and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters were present in the area as well. Iraq’s response was to treat the entire population of Halabja, civilians included, as a target.
Iraqi aircraft dropped chemical bombs on Halabja over the course of several hours. Survivors have described a heavy, sweet-smelling gas rolling through the streets, followed by mass panic as people tried to flee or find shelter in basements, a decision that in many cases proved fatal since some of the agents used were denser than air and settled into low-lying spaces exactly where people were hiding.
The attack killed an estimated 3,200 to 5,000 people within a short period, with thousands more injured. Many of the dead were found in the streets, in doorways, and in basements, still in the positions they’d been in when the gas overtook them. Entire families died together, a detail that became one of the defining, haunting images of the attack once photographs reached the outside world.
A United Nations investigation following the attack concluded that mustard gas and unidentified nerve agents had been used against the civilian population of Halabja. Later analysis, including reporting from the BBC, indicated the attack involved a mixture of agents: mustard gas, along with the nerve agents tabun, sarin, and possibly VX.
These represent two distinct categories of chemical weapon. Mustard gas is a blister agent, meaning it burns and blisters skin, eyes, and airways on contact, often with symptoms delayed by hours. Nerve agents like sarin, tabun, and VX work differently, disrupting the nervous system’s ability to regulate muscle function, which is why they cause the rapid, catastrophic symptoms, constricted pupils, seizures, respiratory failure, that made Halabja’s death toll so high in such a short window of time.
The immediate death toll was staggering on its own, but the long-term consequences for survivors were severe as well. Studies conducted on the population in the years afterward documented elevated rates of respiratory disease, skin conditions, eye problems, infertility, miscarriage, and birth defects in children born to survivors, consistent with the known long-term health effects of both mustard gas and nerve agent exposure.
Halabja became, and remains, the largest chemical weapons attack ever carried out against a civilian population. It is frequently cited alongside the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as one of the starkest examples of a government using weapons of mass destruction directly against its own or a neighboring civilian population rather than an opposing military force.
In the immediate aftermath, the international response was notably muted. Iraq was, at the time, viewed by several Western governments as a counterweight to Iran in the ongoing war, and formal condemnation was slow and limited despite the UN’s own investigators confirming chemical weapons use.
Accountability eventually came, but it took over two decades. Ali Hassan al-Majid, who earned the nickname Chemical Ali for his role in the Anfal campaign and the Halabja attack specifically, was captured following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He was tried by the Iraqi High Tribunal, convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity, and executed in 2010. Several countries, along with human rights organizations, have formally recognized the Anfal campaign, including the Halabja attack, as an act of genocide against the Kurdish people.
It’s tempting to file an event like Halabja away as distant history with no relevance to modern prepping. That would be a mistake. Chemical weapons have been used against civilian populations multiple times since, in Syria’s civil war, in isolated terrorist attacks like the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack, and in state-sponsored assassinations using nerve agents on foreign soil.
The core lesson from Halabja isn’t really about geopolitics. It’s that chemical attacks are a real, documented category of mass-casualty event, and understanding basic recognition and response isn’t paranoia, it’s the same category of preparedness as knowing first aid or fire safety. The rest of this article covers what official public health guidance actually says to do.
Nerve agent exposure produces a distinct, fast-moving set of symptoms. According to the CDC, nerve agent exposure can cause a runny nose, sweating, blurred vision, difficulty breathing, muscle twitching, and confusion, with severe cases progressing to seizures and loss of consciousness. Symptoms from inhaled vapor typically appear within seconds to minutes, while liquid exposure on skin can take hours to show effects.
Blister agents like mustard gas behave differently. OSHA notes that mustard agent symptoms are often delayed, with little or no pain at the moment of exposure, and visible skin and eye injury may not appear for hours or even days depending on the concentration involved. That delay is exactly what makes blister agents so dangerous in a real-world attack: people can be significantly exposed and not realize it until damage is already underway.
If you become aware of a chemical release and you’re outdoors, the first priority is distance. Move away from the affected area quickly, avoiding any path that would take you through the contaminated zone itself, and try to move crosswind or upwind of the source rather than simply running in a random direction.
If you can’t get clear of the area, sheltering in place becomes the priority. OSHA’s guidance for sheltering in place during a chemical release recommends going indoors, closing all doors and windows, shutting off fans and air conditioning or forced-air heating that draws in outside air, and moving to an interior room, ideally one without windows. Keep a battery-powered radio on hand and tuned to local emergency broadcasts, since official instructions may change as a response unfolds.
Because some nerve agents are heavier than air and settle into low-lying areas, a basement is not automatically the safest place to be during a nerve agent release, which is part of what made Halabja’s basements so deadly. Moving to higher ground or an upper floor can matter more than instinct suggests, depending on the specific agent involved.
If you believe you’ve been exposed, getting contaminated clothing off your body is one of the single most effective things you can do. The CDC recommends removing all clothing, jewelry, and accessories immediately, sealing them in a plastic bag rather than the regular trash, and washing thoroughly with soap and water. If clothing has to be pulled over your head, close your eyes and mouth and hold your breath while doing it, to avoid dragging contamination across your face.
Do not induce vomiting if a chemical agent may have been swallowed. Seek emergency medical care immediately, either by calling 911 or going to the nearest hospital once officials confirm it’s safe to travel, and the Poison Control Center at 1-800-222-1222 can provide additional guidance in the meantime. Real antidotes for nerve agent exposure exist, but they need to be administered by trained medical personnel as quickly as possible after exposure.
A well-fitted gas mask with the correct, agent-rated filter cartridge is the closest thing to genuine protection against chemical agents that exists for civilians, and it’s worth having one in a serious preparedness kit if you live somewhere with realistic exposure risk. That said, protection depends heavily on fit, filter type, and how long the mask is worn under exposure, and no mask provides unlimited protection.
Ordinary dust masks, surgical masks, and even N95 respirators offer essentially no protection against chemical warfare agents, since these agents pass through as vapor and can also be absorbed directly through skin and eyes, not just inhaled. Don’t mistake a stockpile of N95s for chemical preparedness; they solve a different problem entirely.
Halabja has since been rebuilt, and a memorial and monument stand in the city today, visited by Kurds and international visitors as a place of remembrance. March 16 is now formally recognized in Iraqi Kurdistan as a day of mourning and remembrance for the victims.
The attack remains a central reference point in discussions of chemical weapons policy, genocide recognition, and the ongoing international effort to prevent chemical weapons use, an effort embodied today in bodies like the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Halabja is cited repeatedly in that context specifically because it demonstrated, in the worst possible way, exactly what these weapons do to an unprotected civilian population.
How many people died in the Halabja attack?
Estimates range from roughly 3,200 to 5,000 deaths, with an additional 7,000 to 10,000 people injured, many with lasting health effects.
Who was held responsible for the attack?
Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali, was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity by the Iraqi High Tribunal for his role in the Anfal campaign, including the Halabja attack, and was executed in 2010.
Is Halabja officially recognized as genocide?
Several countries and human rights organizations have formally recognized the Anfal campaign, including the Halabja attack, as genocide against the Kurdish people.
Can household items substitute for real chemical protective equipment?
No. Items like plastic sheeting and duct tape can help seal a shelter-in-place room to slow the entry of outside air, but they are not a substitute for a properly rated gas mask, and ordinary dust or surgical masks offer essentially no protection against chemical warfare agents.
What Happens When the Systems You Depend On Stop Working?A chemical emergency is an extreme example of how quickly normal life can change. But you don’t need a chemical attack for supply chains, utilities, banks, stores, or other systems you rely on every day to become disrupted.
A serious economic crisis can create its own kind of emergency, and waiting until everyone else realizes there is a problem is one of the worst times to start preparing.
Dollar Apocalypse is designed for people who want to understand how to prepare their households for a major financial and economic breakdown before their purchasing power, access to essential goods, and everyday security are put under pressure.
It explores practical ways to become less vulnerable to an unstable dollar and less dependent on systems outside your control, so that your preparedness goes beyond simply keeping a few emergency supplies in the closet.
Because real preparedness isn’t about predicting exactly which crisis comes next. It’s about making sure your family has options when something you normally take for granted suddenly isn’t available.
If the dollar lost much of its purchasing power tomorrow, would your current preparedness plan still work?
Discover Dollar Apocalypse and Start Preparing Here!
Halabja is a stark reminder that chemical weapons have been used against civilian populations in the real world, not just in fiction, and that the aftermath falls on ordinary families with no warning and often no way to escape. Understanding the actual, official guidance on recognizing exposure, sheltering in place, and decontamination costs nothing to learn now and could matter enormously if you’re ever the person who needs it.
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