In the previous article, we gave you an introduction to Emergency Preparedness. Now we will look in more detail at two essential, life-saving preps; food and water.

Food

Make sure to build enough of a non-perishable, shelf-stable food supply to last you for the most extended duration. Make sure you have the calories you need for yourself and every member of your family (and don’t forget your pets). The average human requires a 1,200 minimum level of calories before the body goes into starvation mode.

You want your calories to be higher than the starvation threshold. Make sure you have a range of calorie and nutrient-dense foods. One big mistake for beginning preppers is simply looking at calories and then stocking up on beans, rice, and Ramen. The human body probably can’t process the two cups of pinto beans per day required to meet that minimal threshold, and those three items, while cheap, will lack the necessary nutrients to sustain you over the long haul.

Look for freeze-dried, canned, pickled, and dehydrated options for your food supplies. Commercially produced freeze-dried emergency kits, while expensive, can have a shelf life of 25 years. Freeze-dried vegetables in an oxygen-deprived package will keep for 15 or more years. Commercially canned foods have a maximum shelf-life of 5 years, and a bag of dried pasta has a shelf-life of about one year.

In addition to the disaster duration, you must determine how long your stored foods will last. I encourage people to eat their supplies and get in the habit of regularly rotating them and cooking with them. If a disaster strikes and most of your food has never been rotated and is out of its usable dates, you will have a much bigger problem on your hands. If you are suddenly shifting your diet to beans and other heavy carbs, you will have other issues. Make sure you have a range of foods to ensure you have a variety of nutrients.

Then assess the calories. Allow for a minimum of 2,000 calories per day to stay above the starvation threshold. Then actually write out some meal plans. And believe me when I say, that is the minimum calorie count. After a disaster, you are more likely to be on your feet and exert effort to do more manual labour such as lifting and carrying items.

This final step of meal planning will inform you as to how usable your foods are. It is excellent to have wheat berries on hand that you plan to grind into flour for bread, but what if you can’t grind them or bake bread? It’s great to have some quick protein shake mixes on hand, but you probably won’t be able to drink more than one per day. An amount of cured meat, nuts, dehydrated fruits and vegetables, and freeze-dried food will be great, but they will require an even larger amount of water per day.

Water

Make sure you have stored water. Ready.gov reports that only 17% of Americans claim to be prepared for a disaster, and I suspect that number is a little high. Even if we accept that number as accurate, it means that 83% of the people don’t have a plan if the water should stop flowing to them. 90% of people in urban areas rely upon the public drinking water system. By doing the math, in the event of a national-scale disaster that taints the municipal water system, 296.5 million people will be thirsty and dehydrated within 72 hours.

Most of those people will lack the means to treat or purify water in the wild, so many will suffer from dysentery or water-borne illnesses if they drink water in the wild. The hours leading up to and following any major disaster will deplete stores of bottled water. To be prepared, you need to store water, but you also need to be able to harvest, filter, and treat water to render it safe for drinking.

A Level 1 disaster might just result in desperately thirsty masses. A Level 2 disaster will require you to have the means to get water from the wild and render it drinkable. A Level 3 disaster will require you to have an ongoing means of harvesting, treating, and filtering water. The general rule for minimal preparedness is one gallon of water per person (don’t forget your pets) per day for 3-days. Sixteen cups are in a gallon, and that’s also the minimal fluid intake for men to avoid dehydration and eventual death. So, this 1-gallon would provide the bare minimum for drinking and not sanitation.

The second goal is extending this bare minimum out to a two-week supply. For a family of 3 with one dog, even though the dog probably isn’t likely to consume or use 1 gallon, we calculate it as doing so, would require 4 gallons per day at the minimum. Two weeks would be 4*14=56 gallons. This can be accomplished with one 55-gallon water barrel stored properly in a garage stacked and lining a closet wall or stored under a bed or 10, 5-gallon water containers. These more comprehensive storage solutions are favourable to stacks of bottled water because of their larger capacity and are easier to store for longer periods.

For your calculations, take it a step beyond the government's suggestions. Consider that the one gallon mentioned above is just for drinking. You need water for cooking, personal sanitation, and household hygiene. Some suggest 3 gallons per person per day. Examine the length of duration you defined earlier for the number of days’ supply you will want, then shoot for at least 2 gallons per person and animal. This will guarantee you enough resources to exceed by rationing most disasters.

This is an easy formula to follow: Estimated Length of Disaster * People/Animals * 2 = Gallons of water required.

Take your preps a level further, as well, and make sure that you can harvest water from the wild and filter or treat it. It’s not feasible for most to store a 3-month supply of water. Do you have the means to boil water if the gas and electricity lines are down and a boil order is issued, or do you suspect the water is contaminated? Do you have a personal filtration device like a LifeStraw in case you are separated from your stored water, or your stored water is destroyed in the disaster? If you are forced away from your home base indefinitely, do you have the means to collect, treat, or filter water, and for how long?

A 100-count potable water treatment tablet would be great for the on-the-go treatment of water and to protect you from ingesting deadly bacteria, but what’s your plan after you have used them? They are only suitable for a few days of water, at best. If you have a pool, do you have a PortaWell in your supplies? That’s 10,000 gallons right there. A life straw can usually filter the same amount, but it can’t filter out chlorination and other chemicals. Whatever solution you have for obtaining water from wild sources or rendering it drinkable from tainted municipal sources, make sure you can boil it, pasteurize it, or filter it to a drinkable state.