Instant potatoes‏ Storage?

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from SURVIVING IN ARGENTINA by FerFAL

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On all of the boxes and packages of instant mashed potatoes I see at the grocery store, the expiration date is only a year or so out?

Is this an item that stores longer than the package indicates, or am I looking at the wrong type?

Thanks....

love the book.

Burt

Thanks for your email Burt.
Sometimes food has an expiration date for stocking and rotation purposes and it doesn't reflect accurately how long a food product can last. You see it in salt, sugar, and honey, products that easily have decades worth of shelf life. Other products such as canned goods can often be eaten years after their expiration date as long as the can isn't leaking or swollen.
In my book, “The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collape”, I describe a few easy to find food products, available in pretty much any supermarket around the world, that are good options for the survivalist that doesn’t have fancy survival food available. While a few MRE and specialty food for emergencies last a long time and taste pretty good, it does get expensive if you only stock up on those. Its better if you have a few staples for bulk, and sprinkle the menu with a few of those other ready meals so as to have some variety and not get bored.
One of these commonly available food products that I recommend is indeed instant mashed potatos. The dehydrated flakes look almost like paper and they infact last well beyond their expiration date as long as they are kept in a dry sealed package away from bugs.
In my book I describe something similar done by Incas, here’s the excerpt,

Dehydrated mashed potatoes: I like this stuff a lot. It stores almost indefinitely as long as it’s kept dry. The ancient Incas used to make something similar: “The Incas had an interesting way of dehydrating potatoes. Small potatoes were placed outside on the ground at high elevations to freeze during the night. The next morning the potatoes would be gathered into piles. The men and women would stomp on them which would cause the water to squirt out. When they wanted to use the dehydrated potatoes they would just add water.” http://coe.fgcu.edu/STUDENTS/WEBB/MESO/incafood.htm
Potatoes are ones of the basic food staples around the world. A lightweight package that stores almost indefinitely and just needs water? Priceless.

Rotate every couple years, but its good to know that they may as well last decades if stored properly. Note that this applies to dehydrated mashed potatos alone. Often you will find many brands that add other ingredients to the instant mix to make it more tasty, usually milk poweder, butter and herbs. This will reduce the shelf life so keep that in mind and check the ingredients.
If you buy bulk and plan for long term storage you might want to store them inside food-grade plastic buckets lined with Mylar bags. Fill the bucket, drop a few oxygen absorbers and seal the Mylar bag with a hot iron. This removes the oxygen and is one of the best methods to keep food stored for long periods of time. Some comercial products like this bucket contain a vairety of food stored, these compliment nicely the staples you may store.

Emergency Survival Food Supply 275 Meal Pack

Sometimes the original instant mashed potatoes packaging is already pretty good and there’s no need for this, just leave it sealed, in a box where the packaging wont be damaged.

Idahoan Real Mashed Potatoes With Vitamin C, 26-Ounce Units (Pack of 4)

 
I like the aluminum lined packages ( used sometimes in tuna pouches). Plastic foils like these will keep the instant mashed potatoes good for years beyond its expiration date.

Take care!

FerFAL

Guest Post: Minimum Necessities

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      If you liked this article, you might want to read:

     Minimum Necessities Upgraded

     No matter what the event happens to be, there is a minimum amount of things that a person should have.  These are:

• One pistol with 100 rounds, + holster +one pistol belt + one extra magazine if it is a semi.  It could be one of the military surplus pistols available now or perhaps a S&W police trade in.  A pawn shop would have some selections as well.
• One rifle or shotgun with a sling and 300 rounds.  A Mosin Nagant can be had for under $100.  Another choice is the single shot break open 12 gauge.  Also for under $100.  Don't forget to consider the ever popular .22lr.
• One gallon unscented bleach for water purification.
• 30 gallons of water. 
• One bottle of multivitamins.
• Waterproof matches.
• 30 days of easy to prepare food  (canned or box packaged from the grocery store)
• First aid kit.
• Jack knife, folder, or pocket knife.
• Hand crank flash light.
• Radio, could be in combination with the flashlight.
• Some way to heat food safely.
• $100 in cash.  (5s, 1s, and quarters)
• Two or three 5 gallon plastic buckets with handles and covers.
• Warm clothing.
• Shelter from the elements.  Four walls and a roof.  Could be a tent.
• Sleeping bag.

     Most people already have some of these things.  Sweaters, jackets, hats, and gloves. 

     Doing a rough estimate, a person could have these "minimum necessities" for approximately $750.  The rifle and pistol would take the lion's share of the money. 

     Buy it and have some peace of mind.  You would only have to worry about rotating the bleach, the food and the vitamins.  Since it is only a thirty day supply, that would be easy to do.

     If you have other people that you are responsible for, please remember to adjust the above accordingly.

     If you like this article, please visit: New Dawn Survival.

     I want to thank  Andrew for allowing me to post this at his website.

Thoughts on "Urban" Pocket Survival Kits

from TEOTWAWKI Blog by TEOTWAWKI Blog

So I've been thinking through an "urban" version of the popular altoid/pocket survival kits (PSKs) out there. The current pocket kits are all well and good for deep exploration in the woods, but not so useful for getting you out of the jams and problems you may encounter in every day life. So, I decided to take a look and see what I could do to make the pocket survival kit concept relevant to me and the average prepared dude out there. So, let's take a look at the pocket survival kit concept in general, and then we'll take a look at whether this concept is relevant to EDC/daily survival, or, if not, see if we can pull out some useful concepts.

Pocket Survival Kits - An Overview

Altoid and various other pocket survival kits are a pretty old concept. I'm not sure of the origins, but it's a decades old idea; part thought-exercise, part Tetris-like fitting challenge and part preparation - what essentials can you fit into a pocket-sized altoids tin or similar container? 

These kits follow along with the old boy scout adage of being prepared. Slip the kit into your pocket and you immediately have have some very basic wilderness survival essentials with you at all times. No one would knowingly walk into a wilderness survival situation with only this gear, but if you DO get separated from your stuff for some reason, at least you've got some way to address some of the survival essentials.

Conventional pocket survival kits usually contain a small fire starting implement, some pre-made tinder, a blade of some kind, a few basic meds, a way to store/carry water, a few water treatment tablets, maybe a small fishing kit of some kind, a keychain-style LED light, a button style compass, a small signal mirror, some safety pins, a couple bandaids, and maybe a few other bits and pieces jammed in. Not a ton of stuff, but a definite boon if you need to keep warm, hydrated, fed and on course in the wilderness. 

There are numerous good examples out there that turn up via a web search, and even a few commercially available tins if you are lazy and don't want to assemble one yourself. The Doug Ritter-designed AMK Pocket Survival Pak is, I think, the best of the bunch and well worth the price of $26.02 that Amazon is currently charging.

Relevant to Urban Survivors?

Let's examine this from the perspective of a prepared person. You've got a decent EDC together - knife and flashlight at least. Those are in your pockets, right? Yep. The same place you'd put a PSK, right? Yep.

And that's one of the big issues that I see with an urban-geared PSK. If you've got a decent EDC, you've already got a lot of the relevant gear. Why worry about a minuscule folding knife and Photon when you've already got a real knife and flashlight? And if you want little backups, you've probably already got them on a keychain, where they will be more immediately useful.

Urban environments also offer a huge opportunity to improvise - lots of man made materials. Fire starting? Yep. Need to signal someone? Sure; mirrors, metal, compact discs, and so on abound. Need a container for water? Check the recycling bin. And so on.

I went through several different revisions of kits, but finally came to the conclusion that a full-blown pocket survival kit just isn't particularly relevant to the urban environment. You probably already got a bunch of the gear as your EDC and you can improvise, scavenge or buy lots other stuff without too much difficulty if needed. Throwing extra gear into a dedicated survival kit just takes up more space in your probably already too-full pockets.

The Kit You Already Carry

So, a full, dedicated urban survival kit will probably be of little utility/relevance to most of us.

But as I was working on putting together a dedicated kit, I realized that, hey, I already have a "kit" of sorts that I carry with me every day. My wallet.

"BWAAA!?" you say?

Think about it. Your wallet is pretty much a must-have for getting through your day in the real world. ID, cards of various sorts, cash and so on. Must-haves, right? Kind of already a kit, too. So why not figure out how to have it hold some added utility and tools, aside from the usual stuff stuff?

What kind of things, you ask? I'll tell you tomorrow in a follow-up post, Wallet Urban Survival Tricks!

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Getting Myself Home to Bug Out, by H. Billy

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from SurvivalBlog.com by James Wesley, Rawles

If the Schumer hits the fan (SHTF) and you’re at work miles away from your home and/or Bug Out Location (BOL) what will you do?  Have you planned your route to get home?  What if it’s not possible to use your route?  Do you have alternate routes?  Getting home to or to your BOL should a SHTF scenario arise will be trying, slow going and stressful enough unless you plan for it properly.  I’m not talking only about physically planning but mentally planning as well.  Giving yourself more options should you need them will hopefully lessen the stress and get you through a little easier. 
If you’ve ever lived in a big city, you know firsthand what the traffic is like during rush hour.  A daily commute of 40 miles, one way, can sometimes take three hours are more.  As the economy has worsened and my seriousness for prepping grew, I often sat, while stuck in traffic, and wondered a few things.   “How can I beat this traffic if a SHTF scenario arose?”  Or how could I get around all of this traffic?  I also thought about how vulnerable I would be if I were stuck on the freeway in gridlock.  Given the urban gangs and how ruthless a lot of people are these days, it would not take the gangs and thugs long to figure out that those individuals sitting on the freeways are actually people who have jobs…and money….and would be easy pickings since after all, you’re not going anywhere anytime soon.  So I began to think of alternate routes (off-road) and what to do if my vehicle was approached by thugs or looters.  I also need to note that I have my youngest daughter with me that I drop off and pick up from daycare daily and my ultimate priority is keeping her safe and getting us both home.
Let me begin with my route.  I live in the outskirts of Los Angeles, California.  The freeway I use for my daily commute is the only freeway in my immediate area that goes in to the Beach cities where I work.  Basically, there is only one way in and out of my area either going to or coming from Los Angeles. There are other freeways north of my location but they are just as congested if not worse and would take me out of my way not to mention much more time.  The freeway I use has no service roads running parallel with the freeway.  There is a few miles of the freeway where it is a bottleneck.  No side roads or surface streets to use.  Once you get past the bottle neck, there are some residential streets but these are even further congested with traffic lights, schools and other commuters thinking that they are getting to work faster by taking the residential streets not to mention that a lot of these streets are not through streets.  So, there is basically only one way in and out along my route.  The freeway is also under construction for lane widening and bridge retrofits which make the commute even that much worse. 
So, I began looking at the terrain around the areas of the freeway during my commute and also began looking at overhead aerial maps of my route on line.  I was surprised at what I had found.  I actually found several alternative routes should the freeway become too dangerous or congested to traverse.  I need to mention that my truck is 4X4 so traversing these routes would be easy for me.  If you do not have a truck for your daily driver, I would suggest that you make sure to check and drive any alternative routes before you actually use one in a SHTF scenario.

1.  Railroad tracks- There are sets of dual tracks with a service road on each side of the tracks for the maintenance crews that run parallel along side of the tracks.  The only thing that I would need to carry is a set of bolt cutters should any of the access gates be locked.  I did a few test drives and found that the access gates to the tracks were almost never locked.  I haven’t actually driven the entire route along the tracks but from viewing the overhead maps, it’s a wide road on both sides of the tracks.  It would be smooth sailing and get me past all of the congestion on the freeway.  This would be my first choice.
2. Bike Path- There is also a paved two-lane (the pavement alone is at least 12’ wide) bike path that runs parallel to the freeway for several miles.  It has an easy access from a residential street and ends at a service road that also runs next to the freeway, past the bottle neck.  Being that there is never a lot of bicycle or foot traffic on the paths, this is also a route that I would consider should the freeway be impassable. 
3. Flood Control- Here in California, the natural streams and rivers have been turned into giant, wide concrete ditches (like those in movies such as the Terminator).  These flood control areas run for miles in all directions through the cities and are almost all connected to each other.  The ones close to my work are easily accessible and would take me to far enough away from the more dangerous areas of the city.  As I get closer to my home, they seem to be less maintained and nature has reclaimed them to an extent.  Upon further viewing, I found these to be overgrown with brush and littered with large rocks.  I haven’t investigated them any further other than the aerial maps but I am almost positive that there is a service road that runs along the flood control.   I would only use this route as a last resort.
4. Off-road Vehicle Trails- I’ve noticed a few fire roads and off-road vehicle trails that go off in all different directions.  I purchased a BLM map and found that these trails would get me home.  Though they are primitive roads, they would eventually get me home. This would also be a last result as it would take hours to get to my home using these roads and time is not on my side in a SHTF scenario.

In Your Vehicle
Well, there’s not a whole lot one can do to secure their vehicle other than spending thousands to armor plate it and add bulletproof glass and maybe a gun turret but we’ll stick to reality.  The best thing you can do is to make sure you properly maintain your vehicle, check your spare tire, have a few tools in case you need them and always have plenty of fuel in the tank.  
For my truck, it’s a diesel, has huge tires and I also added aftermarket heavy duty bumpers in case I need to push vehicles out of my way.  If someone is gunning for me, I need to do everything possible to get my daughter out of the line of fire and to a safer place….like home.  I also tinted the back window and the back door windows with a dark tint so that no one could see how many people might be inside.  The less the thugs know, the more likely they will leave you alone.  Keep ‘em guessing.
In a G.O.O.D. scenario, remember to keep your bug out bag (BOB) as close to you as possible.  If you are legally carrying, make sure to have it at ready. 
But the most valuable item you can get or have is information.  The best tool for this is the radio in your vehicle.  I’m sure most of us saw what happened during the Los Angeles riots of 1992.  You saw on the television reports as people were driving blindly right into the areas where the rioting was going on.  They were totally unaware of everything around them (probably listening to some music--a bad idea.) and you all saw the brutality that ensued from the thugs and rioters on the streets.  My tip for all of you is to keep your radio tuned to local radio news stations so that you can get up to date news of what’s going on in your area.  You might want to take the time to search on line for the local radio networks in your area and save them on your radio presets.  While listening, don’t stick to just one station, tune to different ones because the news reporters will be in different areas of the city and you can get more information by surfing the stations you have stored in your radio by listening to more than just one station.  Use their reporting to your advantage.  There are a lot of AM radio news stations.  Again, don’t stick to FM or just one AM station. Since their studios are usually located “downtown”, they may not be on the air for long.
The bottom line, study your areas and have more than one route to get home or to your BOL.  Properly maintain your vehicle at all times and keep the tank full of fuel.  Listen to the AM news stations in your area to receive the latest traffic reports or other invaluable news reports of things going on around you and get going as soon as you can.  These three simple steps can make a big difference: the difference of getting home safely or sitting in hours of traffic, vulnerable to the two legged vultures..even life or death. I hope and pray this may help others out.

Free Download – Burn Prevention and Care Guide

from Stealth Survival by noreply@blogger.com (riverwalker)

One of the most frequent and most preventable of all serious injuries are burns. Even a minor burn if not treated properly can have devastating effects that could affect you for the rest of your life. Burns can be one the most serious types of injuries that a person may face in their everyday lives but are also one of the most preventable.
Knowing how to prevent them and the proper care required for the treatment of burns is an essential part of being prepared. Recognizing those things which can affect you in your everyday life and being prepared to deal with them can be critical if the worst happens.

Here is a simple guide to help you understand the proper care for burns and how to prevent them:
Burn Prevention and Care Guide

Staying above the water line!

Riverwalker