How long can you survive on the food already in your house?

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Claire

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Something I just responded to made me ask this question. If you had to, how long could you live on the food you now have in your house? I'm thinking about it myself, and I know it would easily be 6 months (assuming I know there is a problem to begin with). What do you think?
 
If I knew ahead of time, at least 6 months, probably longer. Now for all of my animals, their food wouldn't last but a month. My biggest problem here is that we have to haul or have water hauled to us. The 2500 gallon tank lasts us and all of my animals 4 to 6 weeks depending on the time of year and how dry it is.
 
'WAY too long. I very much need to "eat out of my freezer" for a while!! It makes for funny lookin' meals!
 
Forever. We are both children of folks who lived throuh the depression and are squirrels to boot.
 
Do you mean just "eat", or "eat well"? There's definitely a difference.

If it was just plain survival, probably 3 months. If you mean actual normal "meals", probably a month.

However, keep in mind that I live in a small house with very little storage/pantry space, have only one refrigerator/freezer (no extra freezer or anything), & always prefer shopping several times a week for fresh food.
 
Same as Breezy, I dont have an extra freezer to store things, nor do I have a pantry, and also tend to buy food several times a week for freshness, so I guess maybe a month or less.
 
Well, I know I have 2 twenty five pound bags of rice in the house, some canned tomatoes and green beans, frozen corn and meat in the freezer, and the chickens lay 8 to 10 eggs a day. I am probably good for a couple months.

However, I only have a 12 pack of Diet Coke, so by Tuesday, I am gonna be looting the convenience store.
 
Claire said:
Something I just responded to made me ask this question. If you had to, how long could you live on the food you now have in your house? I'm thinking about it myself, and I know it would easily be 6 months (assuming I know there is a problem to begin with). What do you think?
Interesting questions and some very interesting replies. Just for the sake of playing the devil's advocate I will posit a lack of available fuel for electrical generation, hence frozen foods. In that case, survival time could still be virtually unlimited given the storage of legumes, rice, wheat berries, etc. Canned tomatoes, to last a year or two, are easy to accumulate and store. Other fruits and vegetables seem to me to be more problematic because of the need for their periodic replacement. I have no probem using up the aging canned tomatoes, but the canned peas are another matter.

I'd guess my ability to live off what is on hand to about a year.
 
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I think I can survive a 1 year blokade. I buy meat whole sale, by a box so, I always have a lot of meat. Some other pruducts too. Well,if not a year then for sure 6 month.
 
DH would say forever based on how full the freezers are! I'm pretty sure we could do very well for at least 6 months w/out the fuel restrictions. But with those - um - guess I'd cook all I could from the freezer and preserve it with salt? We'd last longer than 6 months but not very well!
 
Yeah, I'm that person at the grocery store that you assume has six kids if you judge by the cart. And I no longer have a second freezer. Or a connected garage. But I still stockpile food. Part of it is how I was raised. Mom grocery (commissary) shopped on payday -- twice a month. Period. That food lasted two weeks, period. We were a family of six, so we usually had TWO grocery carts. Mom froze everything -- bread, milk, you name it. My habits went to once a week (Mom now goes to the store most days!), but I still tend to have the attitude of if you don't tell me what you need on Friday, you probably don't need it until next Friday. So there is lots more food in the house than two people need. When I lived in Florida, I did buy a lot in bulk; but then I cooked for extended family every Sunday. Here it's pretty much just us and whoever we invite over. But I still have a lot more food than two people need. And yes, I was assuming that the freezer and stove were operating; it was a rhetorical question. If you know in advance, you'd be surprised how long you can make your refridgerated and frozen food last. In Florida and Hawaii I learned to freeze bottles of water and make sure every space in the freezer and fridge was full of this ice water. And yes, we did on more than one occaision have to do without electricity, and our fridge and freezer did well, plus we had clean drinking water.
 
Not so long here in my Milan kitchen. Not as long as a month, maybe three weeks, but we would not be healthy, I have a stock of pasta, rice and flour, but not much.

In UK it would be different if we were in the country (presuming we can go out side). We have a good veg garden, and buy seeds a season in advance, so if we were clever we could keep going for a long while and the chickens would have to get a bit more lean. We live very rurally and the local crops/pasture would keep us all happy for a while. If we can't go outside, on the other hand, I don't want to live that long!
 
This is an interesting question for me. I work for U of Missouri Extension, and I am on our local Disaster Management team.

Here in Missouri, we live under threat of tornadoes, and ice storms, and, scariest of all, a replay of the New Madrid earthquake. If that big one hits, it will make Katrina seem like a walk in the park, and it is important that people can care for themselves for days, if not weeks.

I do try to keep enough food in the house to last for a while. I have several gallons of water in the utility room, and I know how to drain the water heater if the water system fails.

We recommend that people keep an emergency pack ready, in an easily accessible place. It should contain a change of clothes, sturdy shoes, important papers, prescription meds, a blanket, and other things that I have forgotten, because I DON'T HAVE AN EMERGENCY PACK.:(

I have just been reading The Great Deluge, about the fiasco that was emergency management during Katrina--if you think the government is gonna come get you after an emergency, you better read that book, and then go get your emergency pack prepared. :glare:

Maybe this diatribe was off topic?
 
Sparrowgrass, reading your post reminded me that shortly after transferring to Memphis from So. California I was assigned the task of adapting the companies disaster plan to the new facility. I had a hard time finding the right person in local govt. to get details on the existing municipal plan. When I finally found him, he explained the plan pretty much boiled down to "every man for hisself."
This was over eleven years ago. Things may have changed since then.
 
How long can you eat on the food currently in your house you ask?

16 years.........after reading the other comments, I guess I'm a bit over the top with my answer. Both refrigs are stuffed as are both freezers and the kitchen store/store room/pantry is overflowing. I adore grocery stores and in my house, it shows.
 
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