Prepping: Food, Water, and Energy
Project: Pioneer #63, November 28, 2024 Thursday 12pm
Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others.
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Don’t despair—prepare.
Happy Thanksgiving from your pioneer friends me, Giavana, and Pia! I guess I shouldn’t have mused about, “What’s next, alien invasion?” It appears it may be on. Military bases around the world are clearly being monitored. More reason to prepare, and that’s what we’ve been all about since we started this pioneer journey. We’ve already covered prepping for personal safety and security, financial security (here, here, here, here and yes, my thinking has evolved on crypto!), and medical. Today we’ll cover food, water, energy. Good timing, as almost everything in the links in those posts is on sale for Black Friday (and likely will be for the holiday season and after, and perhaps ridiculously expensive after Trump comes in Jan 20 and introduces those tariffs). I’m tracking the UAP situation and may do a post on it (prepping for alien invasion?)
Mobile preppers (pioneers) have a much bigger challenge when it comes to food, water, and energy. Most of this stuff is heavy!
Water
If your goal is to harm or kill people, consider that 90% of people rely on the public water systems. Those are fed by reservoirs that are big bodies of water right out in the open. They’re a huge target for any enemy to attack. So, how to stock up? Sure, you can freeze-dry food, but there’s no freeze-drying water. Within 72 hours without water, humans are extremely dehydrated. This breeds desperation, the mind plays tricks, and people resort to drinking bad water filled with bacteria and die from that. Many of our troops in Afghanistan learned this lesson the hard way.
We keep a rack under our White House pioneer RV loaded with 5-gallon containers of water. We use this small device to pop on top and create a nice compact, portable fountain. We also keep some smaller 3L jugs on hand. In a bug-out situation, we likely wouldn’t be able to carry all that weight. We have too many other heavy things further up the priority list (ammo, solar gear, generator, us). Humans require about a gallon of water a day, minimum, just for drinking. Don’t forget your fur babies! Three gallons is the minimum when you include sanitation, cooking, etc. If you have freeze-dried food, you need water.
The small Lifestraws are a great solution—we have a bunch. You can literally stick them in a pond or lake or puddle and safely drink through them in almost all circumstances. Next up the chain is a collection system that can be used to filter rainwater or other sources. This larger one is the best bet. Having these lightweight solutions means you can skip carrying too much heavy water and utilize any you find in a new location. We also keep purification tablets in our bug-out gear. I’m not a fan of the systems that attach to guttering. Those gutters are filthy, and likely introducing an abundance of aluminum, rust, or plastic. Sure, it should be filtered out, but still. Food-grade collection barrels are a good way to keep stock on hand if you have space. As an extra precaution, you can boil your water if you have sufficient heat/energy to use for that. Here’s a video on a budget DIY water collection system.
If you have a pool, congratulations! It’s a wonderful emergency water supply. You can use products like the PortaWell to immediately convert it to safe water, and it’s already way cleaner than pond or lake water (I hope!). It’s another reason I converted my pool to salt rather than chlorine sanitation, back when I had a house with a pool. If it’s an inground pool, when it’s empty you can always use it for hidden shelter (assuming you have a robust cover), if not just waiting for rain to fill it back up. Perhaps shallow end for hiding, deep end for water.
If you live in a fixed location, you might have a well. Don’t be overconfident. During this recent severe drought around the US, wells started running dry. As well (sorry for the pun), they can easily be contaminated. (Have you had yours tested lately?). Keep a good stock of backup water and rotate through it.
Food
We need to exceed 1,000 calories a day, on average, before we hit starvation mode. You should shoot to double that number. Don’t just look at calories, though. You need a diversity of good nutrients and vitamins to stay healthy and alert. Beans and rice alone won’t cut it—your body will revolt at trying to continually process those dense foods. Costco-sized bags of these items, if not stored properly, will likely develop worms or go bad in other ways over time.
Cases of canned foods like chili and stew are great, but again, heavy. The water is already in there. It’s good to have a few cases on hand, but use them regularly to rotate/cycle through them, always storing so the oldest bought is next up to consume, to avoid expiration dates (which are generally suggestions in my humble opinion!) We also keep stores of protein bars on hand for quick energy.
Costco has a great selection of emergency freeze-dried food kits. We buy our other bulk goods there. Military Meals Ready to Eat (MRE) kits come with everything you need, including a heat source to warm food. Some are surplus, and that’s fine, they have an over five-year shelf life. Make sure you sample anything you buy. Sure, by complacent normal-life standards they might not be the best. But when you hit starvation/survival mode, you’ll be surprised how heavenly delicious they are.
Our kit includes a compact kitchen mess kit complete with a Jetboil stove. The small Jetboil cannisters are a great compact, efficient source of heat and can be bought at any local outdoor store. They were quite popular with our troops in Afghanistan, for good reason.
We have a good prepper seed kit for the long haul, if growing is possible (see: nuclear or solar radiation). Like water, your food will only last so long. It’s good to practice gardening now, so you know the rigors of doing it right and keeping animals (and humans) away from your crop. As well, you should consider a good, compact fishing kit, perhaps some traps or snares for game. Our personal security post covered guns and ammo, and they can be used for non-humans, too. A few chickens can be a great source of eggs, and perhaps protein.
Energy
If you’ve been following us, you know we’ve been concerned about this aspect of survival prepping. Yes, even though we live in a completely self-sufficient pioneer covered wagon RV! We have a gasoline/propane duel-fuel generator, but again, fuel is heavy and these are noisy (even the “quiet” ones). Noise attracts unwanted attention, especially if others have no power. It could be deadly. Fuel will be hard to come by in the worst circumstances (gas stations do require energy to pump gas, if they have any).
For those reasons, we’ve been feeling exposed and concerned. No energy, no survival, not for long, anyway. We did a ton of research, first starting with ways to solar outfit our RV, which is the usual route people take. But, we started thinking, what if we have to bug out without the White House? What if we someday get that dream log cabin and sell the White House, or simply upgrade it? So, the research turned to more practical solutions to address those concerns. We went with this Jackery kit (way cheaper now with Black Friday, ugh) and then added another expansion battery and two more 200w folding panels, along with some extension cables. These work incredibly well and the Jackery support team are amazing. As long as that old black hole sun is burning, we have energy, power for life. Whew.
We have a smaller folding solar charging blanket for some smaller uses. I’m also exploring comms, as in getting my ham radio technician’s license and a home rig plus some portable radios. We do have hand-crank weather/emergency radios (with solar recharging) and longer-range walkie talkies for now.
As always, keep the essential books handy, both in hardcopy and stored locally on a laptop or even better, extremely small and lightweight Kindle that can be read in daylight. Remember, download the books to the device so they’re on there and ready when there’s no wifi. These make great holiday gifts, and can save lives in so many different circumstances.
Prepper’s Long-Term Survival Guide
So, this is where Giavana, Pia, and I are currently in our pioneer journey. We’ll keep you updated as we learn more and make more concrete decisions. The clock is ticking. Stay tuned!
"All things are ready, if our mind be so."—William Shakespeare
“Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.”—Carl Sagan
“Fascinations breeds preparedness, and preparedness, survival.”—Peter Benchley
"Private-sector preparedness is not a luxury; it is a cost of doing business in the post-9/11 world. It is ignored at a tremendous potential cost in lives, money and national security."—The 9/11 Commission Report
"As a species, we've somehow survived large and small ice ages, genetic bottlenecks, plagues, world wars and all manner of natural disasters, but I sometimes wonder if we'll survive our own ingenuity."—Diane Ackerman
This pioneer journey continues…
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Intro music is Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby.
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