This week I've been vacuum-packing even more dry foods in Mason jars. There must be room in this place for one more five-foot stack of flats. Um, somewhere. Next up is more oatmeal, cornmeal and shelled nuts. And as backup for my backups, I got a bunch-o'-Ramen noodle soup, slit the packages and ran 'em through the FoodSaver. They're cheap and take up little room. Add water, 190 calories. Not a gourmet treat, but they're calories.

Calories are everything when prepping for a food deficient future. When it all hits the fan, those who think they need an interesting variety of food are in for an epiphany. Food isn't entertainment. They'll not only eat much the same thing day after day, they'd crawl over broken glass to do it. Choosiness will be a barely credible memory. Today's over-hydrated generation with their no fat, gluten-free, low calorie diets will have their teachable moment, as will those who demand a balanced diet at every meal. Calories first, nutritional nuances second. And sometimes there is no second, to wit:

Pan Am Post - Muchacho reported that in Venezuela, it is a “painful reality” that people “hunt cats, dogs and pigeons” to ease their hunger. The population’s desperation has begun to show, with looting and robberies for food increasing all the time. Six Venezuelan military officials were arrested for stealing goats to ease their hunger.

Activist Post - Many people expect an economic collapse to be shocking, instant, and dramatic but, really, it’s far more gradual than that. Many began to suspect the outlook for Venezuela was grim when prepping became illegal. Shortly thereafter, grocery stores instituted a fingerprint registry to purchase food and supplies. Families had to register and were allotted a certain amount of supplies to prevent “hoarding.”

Only a fool would believe they could prepare "just in time". Remember how the ammo shortage started. First, prices began to rise as inventory fell. "It's only a blip. Things will soon get back to normal, they always have." Then there were empty shelves here 'n there. No big deal, if one outlet didn't have it, another one did. Until they didn't. When the ugly truth was obvious to all, panic buying began and the bottom of the bucket fell out. The cause of the ammo scarcity doesn't matter. What matters is foolishly depending on normalcy. It's okay to expect normalcy, not okay to rely on it.

"Shocking, instant, and dramatic" can't be discounted either. The list is long. Another New Madrid earthquake could take down bridges over the Mississippi—it's surprising how few there are—and hundreds of others. Or maybe another Carrington event or a nuclear EMP by a rogue regime will take down the grid, perhaps for years. Not to be overlooked is war itself [see "World War III, The run up" below]. Or a sudden, catastrophic economic failure could freeze everything in place for the forseeable future, a repeat of the 1930s. Or it could be something we don't even have a name for.

Solve food and the specifics matter much less. The prudent will stock a deep larder using home canning, dehydrating, vacuum dry packing, salting, smoking and a goodly supply of commercial long term storage foods. Regional events elsewhere suggest survival will be a more intense version of life itself, a marathon of hard work and routine, with occasional run-ins with dangerous people. As the well known and obvious truth has it, "there's no long term without the short term". Those who make it through the first year okay, and who use that year well, have the best shot at surviving the storm altogether.

http://www.woodpilereport.com/