By popular request, I am moving this post on stocking up to be the first in the series, instead of the eighth. Some of this information will probably be easier to digest and fine-tune after reading some of the other posts, such as the ones on eating cheaply and using less stuff and energy at home. However, I hope to be able to give a broad overview to at least help people get started.
There are endless rabbit holes to go down in the realm of resiliency and preparedness. I do not intend here to discuss how to prepare for a nuclear meltdown, an EMP, or the proverbial zombie apocalypse. I am going to focus on the relatively commonplace problems of economic contraction, downward mobility, poor public health, natural disasters, supply chain disruptions, and garden variety sociopolitical unrest which I view as being likely in the near future, if not already extant. If you want to go deeper or farther out, you are welcome to do so in the comments (and I might join you there), but please do not harangue me for failing to address in these essays the quantity and caliber of ammunition needed for defending one’s bunker from the warbands, or what-have-you.
A further word before we get into the nitty gritty, about panic spending and debt: I would never recommend going into consumer debt in order to stockpile a bunch of stuff. If you have ten pounds of rice and ten of lentils, a pound of salt, a few gallons of water, some soap and rubbing alcohol, a few herbal teas or supplements, and some extra toilet paper, I would recommend focusing on paying off debts and reducing expenses rather than spending all your money (or worse, money you don’t have) on prepper gewgaws or a three-year supply of nutritionally balanced hermetically sealed meals.
That being said, let us consider the “rule of three”: humans can survive for approximately three minutes without oxygen, three hours without proper body temperature regulation (for instance, if caught hiking in cold rain, suffering heat stroke, or having fallen into cold water), three days without water, and three weeks without food.
Hopefully, oxygen will not be a problem. So, let’s tackle proper body temperature regulation briefly before moving on to water, food, and household necessities, which are what most people think of when they consider stocking up.
For working, playing, or commuting by foot or bicycle outdoors, I recommend having something like a set of backpacking clothes: a wicking base layer which insulates even if wet from sweat or precipitation (I like merino wool, but there are some good, lightweight synthetics out there as well; cotton is no good). Next, a midlayer for temperature control (you can add or remove this layer as needed to properly regulate your body temperature; down or synthetic fleece are common among backpackers, but wool and some other fabrics can also work). And finally, a waterproof shell (this could be lightweight synthetic, or it could be waxed canvas, oilcloth, leather, etcetera). You will also want the proper accessories: socks (I prefer wool), headgear (winter hat and/or balaclava, water-shedding hat or hood), gloves and/or mittens, scarf or wool buff, and possibly an umbrella. For hot weather, it’s nice to have a bandana to soak in cold water and drape around your head or neck, as well as a sun hat, and perhaps a parasol.
For indoors, you may want a sweater, cardigan, or shawl; some fingerless gloves which allow you to work or type while keeping your hands warm; a throw blanket; some warm house shoes, moccasins, down booties, or socks; and a hot water bottle for warming a bed or resting cold feet on. This will be handy if the power goes out in winter, as well as making it easier to lower your thermostat setting to save energy and money (I keep mine at 55 degrees F, which is enough to keep the pipes from freezing; you’ll need to leave doors open to utility rooms and such in order for the warm air to heat the pipes there).
Here is an article about very cheaply heating yourself and your immediate personal space in a normal house in the Rockies in Montana with electric heat, which allowed the author to shave 87% off his electric bill:
For sleeping, you’ll want plenty of good blankets (I like wool, and there are often really nice wool blankets at thrift stores in colder climates) and perhaps a good down or synthetic sleeping bag. I also like to keep a sleeping bag in my vehicle in case I get stranded in cold weather.
A stainless steel insulated thermos is nice for both hot and cold weather; I make hot herbal teas and put them in my thermos in winter to take with me while I’m working outdoors, and I use it to keep my drinking water cold in summer.
Now let’s look at the next item from the rule of three: water. Water is important. I like to have some stored, as well as having ways to access and purify more. I live in a truck most of the time, so I just have two six-gallon food-grade jerry cans that I keep full of water (I like the slim Reliance brand that slide into the bed right behind my wheel wells without protruding into the sleeping space; my fiancé prefers the cube-shaped ones with a spigot for convenience). Those 12 gallons can last me a couple of weeks if I’m being relatively careful, or closer to a week if I’m washing lots of dishes and clothes.
I also keep a Lifestraw and/or Sawyer Mini filter on hand (my fiancé also has a Katadyn filter that he likes; they are more durable although also more expensive and heavier), and some iodine tablets for emergency purification. I have a JetBoil backpacking stove as well as a Coleman propane stove and a cooking pot, so I can boil water to sterilize it as well. At my family home, I have a Berkey countertop filter for purification and a pot still for desalination (we are near the ocean). I would also like to get or make a solar still; you can allegedly make them out of found materials relatively easily in an emergency. I also carry some medical-grade flexible tubing for desert hiking, which I can snake down into crevices between rocks to get at water if I need to.
When storing water, three days’ worth at a gallon per person per day is a good minimum to aim for when getting started.
If you don’t have room to store much water, learn to make the most of what you already have in your home. If you have a hot water heater, learn how to get water out of its tank in an emergency. Consider installing rain barrels in your yard or on your balcony. I know people who live on boats who don’t have roofs but use tarps and biminis to catch rainwater and direct it into rain barrels. Having a purification method on hand is a good idea if you’re using rainwater, although not always necessary depending on your catchment method. If you know a power outage or other emergency is coming, fill your bathtubs, sinks, pots, and extra containers before it hits. Make the most of extra space in your fridge or freezer (and increase energy efficiency and the amount of time your food will stay cold in a power outage) by keeping containers full of water in there (but don’t freeze water in airtight glass containers). You can even store sealed containers of water in your toilet tank, which also creates a poor man’s low-flow toilet. You can probably find space in closets or cupboards, under beds or stairwells, in garages, etc. for extra water (and if not, maybe you will be able to after reading the section on decluttering in the post about using less energy and stuff at home!). If you drink juice or soda (which you probably shouldn’t), you can fill those containers with water and tuck them away as you empty them, at no cost to you. You can often get food-grade five-gallon jugs at health food stores with a bulk section; they’ve often been used to hold cooking oil, and can be hard to fully clean, however. It’s not a bad idea to have a few gallons of water in your vehicle, as well, in case you break down or get stuck somewhere, or have to evacuate unexpectedly. It’s also not a bad idea to know where your local natural bodies of water are, and to be fit enough to get there and haul water back home to purify it, or to be on good terms with someone who is.
If you do have room, you can of course store more water, probably in larger containers. There are modular 50-gallon storage tanks that you can stick in your basement or under your gutters, cisterns that hold many thousands of gallons, ponds, natural swimming pools, and all sorts of other options. I like the system where a small solar-powered pump moves water uphill when the sun shines to fill a cistern, and then when it’s dark or cloudy, or your normal power supply goes out, you still have a big cistern full of water that will gravity-feed downhill to the house under decent pressure. Manual and/or solar well pumps and other means of accessing your water if the electricity goes out are also worth considering. Many of these options are of course more expensive than empty apple juice jugs, but also not something you need to worry about if you are just getting started.
However you store it and however much you store, try to rotate your water regularly and make sure you have a means of sanitizing it if necessary. Opaque containers kept in the cool dark don’t grow as much weird stuff as clear ones exposed to sunlight and warm temperatures. Also, plastic containers won’t degrade as quickly or leach as much creepy stuff into your water if they’re kept cool and shaded.
It is also worth testing your normal drinking water to see if there is weird stuff in it, even if it seems fine. I recently tested some well water at my dad’s place and found lead, uranium, and fecal coliform bacteria using the TapScore test. The water looked and tasted totally fine. City water and wells in agricultural areas are often cocktails of toxic crud.
Finally, consider installing water-saving measures before you need them, as you can afford to, and also consider taking your poop out of the water cycle and putting it into the carbon cycle (where it can do a great deal of good) via a composting toilet. There are numerous options available commercially, or you can build a very cheap and low-tech bucket system and compost it yourself. I have done this, and it’s relatively easy with zero smell (except when you’re emptying the buckets). You can read more about how to build a composting toilet and manage it properly in Joseph Jenkins’s Humanure Handbook or on his website. At the very least, having a bucket toilet setup may come in handy when the power goes out and you don’t have enough water to flush your toilet.
Brad Lancaster also has some good books on greywater and water conservation and reuse focused on drylands, and Art Ludwig’s Creating an Oasis with Greywater offers plans for cheap and simple greywater systems that you can build yourself. This will help you grow food and other useful plants with your greywater rather than losing it to a septic or sewer system. It will also encourage you to stop using toxic and expensive soaps, detergents, bleaches, clog clearers, and other unnecessary household liquids, because they will kill your plants!
Okay, now let’s consider food. I’m going to write this as if you have no particular dietary needs or health issues, for the most part, since otherwise it would be a hundred pages long. Modify as necessary, and feel free to discuss further or ask questions in the comments. I have spent years following vegan and paleo diets in the past, and have made/will continue to make my living as a cattle rancher, so I do have some thoughts on a variety of alternative diets.
That being said, my basic cheap, storable food strategy centers around legumes and grains. My favorites are lentils and buckwheat, with black beans and rice running a close second. Most grains and legumes contain something like 600 calories per cup when dry, before cooking (this can vary by as much as a couple hundred calories, depending on the specific grain or legume, so it’s worth checking). What you’ll want to do is think about how many calories you and your household members need to consume each day, and plan accordingly. A 2,000 calorie diet is a nice round number, and probably not too far off for many people. If you are a small person or need to lose some weight, you might plan for something closer to 1,500 calories per day, but remember that it can be hard to maintain energy levels and body heat if you’re on a restricted-calorie diet, and a power outage or quarantine may not be the time to add additional stress to your life. If you are very physically active, you might need to plan for double that--it’s not unusual for me to burn 3,500-4,000 calories per day on extended backpacking trips in cold weather while carrying a pack, or 2,500-3,000 calories per day while doing normal farm/ranch stuff, and I am a 5’6” female.
So, say that you are going for 2,000 calories per person per day, and you want to store about 1,800 of those calories as grains and legumes, and make up the additional 200 calories or so with cooking oil, canned vegetables or stored root vegetables, etc. That would mean 2 cups of legumes and 1 cup of grains per person per day (I tend to favor legumes, as they have a little more protein relative to their carbohydrate content, but you could reverse the ratios or do 1.5 cups of each, depending on preference and price).
One pound of dry beans is about 2 cups. So say you bought a 50 lb bag of dry beans and a 25 pound bag of rice--that means you’ve got about 50 days worth of stored food for one adult, easy-peasy. Just multiply or divide based on how many days of food you want to store and how many people you are storing it for. I would say three days’ worth of food is an absolute minimum, three weeks’ worth is better, and three months’ is probably enough for almost everybody. I never keep more than a year’s supply of food on hand at any one time, because it’s too hard to keep track of and use up before it spoils. The only reason I keep that much is because I grow, raise, and hunt a lot of food, and so do a fair amount of seasonal preservation that needs to hold me over until the next year when I can grow or slaughter that particular type of food again.
Supplement your grains and legumes with a few bottles of cooking oil, some canned tomato products, some salt and spices, and some root vegetables such as garlic, onions, carrots, and potatoes rotated in and out of storage, and you should be able to provide yourself with a staple diet with plenty of calories and decent nutrition. This will hedge against price increases and hold you over if there are problems with accessing groceries due to inclement weather, quarantines, or supply chain disruptions.
Often, I will saute in oil some carrots, onions, and garlic, then add a jar of diced tomatoes and some water or stock and throw in a potato and a few handfuls of lentils and buckwheat to cook in the broth. Day by day, I will add a few more handfuls of grains, legumes, or vegetables to it. Perhaps once a week or so I will add some meat--usually the meat from a whole chicken which I have boiled or roasted and stripped. I then use the chicken carcass and any vegetable trimmings I have saved up throughout the week (I keep them in the freezer until I’m ready) to make stock, and add that to the soup. It is very cheap and very easy to keep a pot of soup like this going almost indefinitely. I will also often make a pasta sauce of partially pureed cooked legumes and lots of tomatoes, onions, garlic, carrots, and other vegetables cooked in water or broth and serve it over pasta or rice for a relatively nutritious and higher-protein pasta dish.
I strongly recommend soaking your beans and grains (and not the quick-soak method, either), and preferably sprouting or fermenting them to reduce potential digestive issues. This is easy, and there are instructions online, but it’s probably a good idea to practice a little now if you’re not used to doing so.
For variety, rolled oats, nuts and seeds, nut butters, dried fruits, fruit butters, jams/preserves, and honey all store well and make nice breakfast foods. Flour and sugar, while perhaps not the healthiest options, also store well and are cheap and pretty versatile. You can make oatmeal or porridge, pancakes, breads and quick breads, and thickeners for savory dishes with these. If you can get eggs, this rounds out the nutrition and also serves as a good binder in many of these dishes; flax seeds can replace eggs as a binder and are better for long-term storage, although best stored whole (not ground) and preferably in the freezer.
The diet described above, while healthier than what most people in America eat, and relatively nutritious, is certainly limited in some ways. I like to keep some greens powder or “superfood” powder around--it makes a nice drink (I mix mine into smoothies, water with lemon juice, or hot chocolate) and tends to round out micronutrient consumption in a relatively whole-food form. You can harvest edible greens, weeds, berries, etc. when they are in season, dehydrate them, and powder them to make a very cheap or even free greens powder packed with nutrition.
You can also take advantage of seasonal surpluses (and hence sales) of fruits or vegetables and preserve them (water bath canning or pressure canning are pretty permanent, dehydration lasts quite a while if foods are stored properly, and ferments can also last a while, especially in the fridge if the power stays on). Grocery stores often advertise “loss leaders,” meaning heavily discounted items sold at unprofitable prices to get you in the door; if you just buy the loss leader and resist unnecessary purchases, you can get really good deals and stock up on nutrient-dense fruits and vegetables this way, so long as you have the skills to preserve them. It’s not a bad idea to start scoping out fruit and nut trees, berry bushes, and edible weeds in your neighborhood; they often go unharvested, and can be an abundant source of calories and nutrition for those who are able and willing to harvest and preserve them in season.
Of course, if you can garden at all, this will be very helpful; even some herbs on the windowsill can provide a great deal of nutritional and medicinal value which might otherwise be out of reach for financial or logistical reasons. I grow and dry most standard culinary herbs, as well as some less common medicinals for teas, tinctures, poultices, etc.
Depending on what you keep in stock, what is available from your backyard or your local grocery stores, what you can afford to buy, and any dietary restrictions you may have, you might want to consider stocking certain nutritional supplements such as B-12 (if you aren’t stocking or consuming animal products), vitamin D and vitamin K2, vitamin C, fish oil, magnesium, or simply a multivitamin. (I’ll get more into herbs and supplements during the discussion of cheap home health care later on.)
Starting to cook and eat as described above on a daily basis will not only save you money, it will help work out any kinks in your emergency systems before you need to rely on them (like realizing that you can’t cook your dry beans without power, or that you don’t have a manual can opener to get into your diced tomatoes), and it will automatically rotate your food stores to keep them fresh, so I highly recommend it.
If you don’t have access to good stores near you, Azure Standard is an online service which ships to many places and can be a good source of pretty reasonably priced bulk organic grains and legumes, as well as lots of other organic food, including produce, if there is a drop near you or you are able and willing to host one (or find someone who can).
You’ll want to store your grains, legumes, flours, etc. in such a way that bugs can’t get to them, and flooding, leaks, or liquids spilled on the floor will not soak into the bags. I like plastic food-safe buckets for storage; they can be quite expensive when purchased new, but you can often find them used for cheap or free from health food stores with bulk sections. Large plastic tubs with lids can also work quite well. Most grains and legumes have undergone some kind of bug-killing process before sale, but you might consider freezing them briefly before storage to kill insect larvae (be careful of condensation) or mixing them with food-grade diatomaceous earth.
In order to be able to cook when the power goes out, I have a JetBoil backpacking stove, a bigger Coleman stove and 5-gallon propane tank with adapter, a GoSun solar tube cooker, a more conventional solar oven, an indoor wood cookstove, an outdoor J-tube rocket cookstove, a barbecue grill, and the ability to build a fire (along with the cast iron cookware that can handle direct flame). You might consider some combination of similar cooking methods, depending on your circumstances.
With that, we’ve covered most of the basic necessities of human life. In addition, you might also consider stocking up on (in no particular order):
Contact lenses (or perhaps an extra pair of glasses)
Any necessary medications and medical supplies
Menstrual supplies
A few extra pieces of clothing that are likely to wear out or about which you are especially picky (socks, boots, bras)
Parts and equipment for tools and appliances (batteries, screws and fasteners, saw blades, oil and fuel, filters, canning lids and pressure canner gaskets, O rings, etc)
Fuel for camping stoves or big outdoor propane tanks
Lighters, matches, or ferrocerium rods
Headlamps, lightbulbs, candles, lamp oil
A battery-powered radio
Charging cords and battery banks/battery packs
Soap, hand sanitizer, rubbing alcohol
Toilet paper
Manual can opener
Pocket knife or multitool
Basic cooking equipment (cast iron skillet, steel spatula, stainless soup pot, chef’s knife)
Paper and pens/pencils
Books to read, a deck of cards, a board game or puzzle, and a more physically active game (basketball, hacky sack, horseshoes, Twister, cornhole, frisbee)
This list is by no means comprehensive or suitable for everyone. Imagine yourself in a power outage, quarantine, evacuation, or flooded in without the ability to get to town for a few days, and think about what you will actually use or need.
If you are overwhelmed by trying to think of everything you might need or want, look at a gear list for a thru-hiker of one of the long trails such as the Appalachian or Pacific Crest Trail. All their stuff will fit in a backpack by definition, and be sufficient to keep them alive outdoors in the mountains for three seasons out of the year. It’s not that much stuff. Focus on what will keep you warm, dry, fed, watered, and hygienic. Add supplies (and skills) to mitigate injuries and medical emergencies and deal with any ongoing medical issues such as diabetes, COPD, etc.
Once you have stocked up on necessary consumables, it’s time to put any remaining cash which you can afford to spend into useful physical assets. My definition of an asset is a thing that makes and/or saves you money, allowing you to keep more money at the end of the day.
This might be a solar power setup, a nice wool sweater that allows you to turn down the heat, seeds or gardening tools, a solar dehydrator or canning supplies, backpacking and camping equipment that allows you to forgo conventional housing for part of the year, a good pair of zero-drop shoes that lets you commute to work on foot without needing to pay for knee surgery in five years, a home office build that allows you to claim a tax deduction for your business, a musical instrument that allows you to make money teaching students, a rifle and hunting license which allows you to reduce your food costs, or a book which teaches you to do basic car or plumbing repairs at home. It might be a good idea to set a timer and spend 15 minutes coming up with a list of such assets, being as creative and wide-ranging as possible, and then prioritize them to purchase as you free up money.
Preferably, these assets will be immediately useful, and their value will not be locked up (for instance, a grove of black walnut trees that you plan to harvest for timber, a valuable painting, a piece of jewelry, or a house to be sold may all be useful stores of value, but they don’t make or save you any money until you get rid of them).
These things might also be liabilities disguising themselves as assets--if your home costs you money every month and you never realize the appreciation by selling it (or it actually depreciates), it is functioning in your life as a liability rather than an asset, taking money out of your pocket every month instead of putting money in your pocket. This may also be true of your car and of possessions that you are paying to store (especially in climate controlled spaces). Your goal is to acquire enough consumable necessities to ride out hard times, and then to invest in durable assets that make or save you money. Do not buy durable liabilities if you can help it!
If all the information in this post tends to overwhelm you or freak you out, please remember that it’s unlikely that you will have to hide in your house for months feeding yourself exclusively from your basement, and even less likely that you’ll need to survive on roadside weeds while fighting off your erstwhile neighbors with your multitool! It is rather likely that your grocery store’s produce will become more expensive, a few items will disappear from the shelves for weeks or months, and a few more things on your Amazon wishlist will go out of stock and remain that way indefinitely, or take months to ship. Medical care may very well be difficult to access for various reasons, be even more painfully expensive than it is already, and do more harm than good to an even greater degree than currently. Weather will probably get worse, and the resources available to be thrown at recovering from natural disasters increasingly strained. Plan to ride out price spikes, shortages, and inconveniences, rather than to hoard every possible item you might need in the future, as if all sources of production and commerce will instantaneously vanish from the face of the planet.
If you’re willing, I recommend spending some time playing pretend: imagine that you are a good Victorian housewife, thrifty, industrious, and prudent; or an early American colonist; or a citizen of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression; or a medieval cottager hearing rumors of the Black Death; or a mountain man trapping for a living; or a peasant (or, worse, an aristocrat!) during the French Revolution; or a hobbit living in the Shire; or Laura Ingalls Wilder. What do you need, how do you live, on whom do you rely, what do you eat, where do you get your water, how do you spend your time, how do you get and stay clean, how do you keep your body and your home comfortable, who cares for you when you are hurt or sick, and how do they do it? Actually take the time to imagine these scenarios fully, and I bet you’ll end up with some good, creative ideas about preparing for less extravagant times. If you’re anything like me, you may also find that you are more excited than frightened by the prospect of a way of life other than standard-issue industrial consumerism, despite the real risks and deprivations of downward mobility and social instability.
Thank you for reading, and please stay tuned for next month’s post on reducing your housing costs, to be published here on October 4th.
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