To stockpile 72 hours of supplies

We have a well so could always boil water

I first stockpiled when bird flu happened. This is how we found out there were mice in the garden and mice could eat through plastic. Then Brexit, there was talk of some stuff no longer being available. The cupboard in question is still called the brexit cupboard. Then Covid. This was replenished regularly. It's looking quite bare at the moment actually.
Only my first stockpile included water.

I would struggle even though not utterly skint! Two reasons, tiny kitchen (read miniscule fridge freezer) and I live two minutes from a large Sainsbury's so am in there most days. I wish this want the case though.

My mother always kept a good stock of food in so that's how I was bought up. Due to illness I couldn't get out for almost two months recently, but, I lived out of my cupboards and freezer. The only thing I ran out of was eggs and eventually bread. Must admit I don't buy bottled water, may have a couple of small bottles, but I've got pop and if a matter of life or death I'd scrape ice out of freezer and melt that. I've got battery lights and plenty of nice smelly candles. Even people on a really tight budget should be able to buy an extra tin of something to keep in stock, it soon mounts up. Tin of fruit, you've got food and fluid.

When I lived in a capital city our water was cut off with no warning due to a fire. It was 11.30pm on 31st December and NO shops opened until the 2nd January.

Plus I had D&V. It was not pretty.

Fortunately we had stored water to flush the toilet, wash the dishes that we d stupidly left for 1st January, bottles of water to drink and baby wipes to wash our hands.

Since then, DH has never mocked my prepper stores ever again.

I reckon I could survive 6 months in toothpaste and incontinence pads because I've got an amazon subscribe and save that went a bit haywire.

We have frequent power cuts. The problem with saying you can live off the freezers contents for 72 hours is that every time you open the door, you affect the inside temperature. In a real SHTF situation, then its worth it. But if you think the cut might be temporary then you really don't want to be opening that seal just for one or two meals, and risk the rest of the food.

I know people who are wealthy, got a decent sized kitchen to store stuff, yet hardly any food and other things too. What’s that all about?

Friend lives in a family of 5. I don’t understand why she buys a pack of 4 loo rolls every 2-3 days when it’s cheaper to buy 24 rolls. Think 4 rolls is £1.80. Whereas 24 rolls is £6.50, £3.50 cheaper than buying 6x24. That’s about £100 less per year.

Plus never brings her own bags. That’s another £120 wasted

New OS maps also have this information and it’s less likely to have been built upon then.

Probably have 3 weeks worth if we cleared the fridge cupboards and freezer.

@DrPrunesqualer I bloody love Primula cheese spread, it's so... Cheesy!

Offers fishing net and rod and line .
Kicks fishing gnome out if the way

We would have enough food to keep us alive for 3 days but it would be some random
combinations. At the moment I can’t think of some pasta dishes that we could make.
It’s not financial hardship, I’m just not a stockpiler. I don’t have loads of excess spare space for collecting bags and boxes of stuff ‘just in case’.
As it stands we get a food shop delivered on a Monday with staple items and one of us will go to the shop most days for the rest of the ingredients to make what we fancy that particular day.
Dh goes to the butchers on a Friday so when he gets home later there will be a few days worth of meat. We don’t often do a week of meat shopping as it doesn’t cook as nicely once it’s been frozen. to be honest we have a big freezer and it’s empty except for ice cream, ice packs for ankle injuries and ice cubes for my margaritas 😂
not even a bag of frozen chips!

This reminds me of an early Walking Dead where Michonne raids a house for food and comes out squeezing cheese from a tube straight into her mouth.

So it must last a long time and on the plus side Zombies don’t like it 🤣🤣

As I understand it the material to degrade first could be the straps, not the body of the mask, the bit that does the filtering. Given a choice between a technically expired good mask and a blue surgical one, or no mask at all, I'd take the expired good one.

It is much more likely that water supply goes off without warning than not. Even without the threat of an attack on the systems that get the water to your tap. A burst water main can take days to fix depending on where it is. You won't ha e time to fill your pots.
Our water was off for several days a few years ago due to a burst main. The water company did drop water off at various locations but many of these were difficult to get to and carry home without a car.

Probably like primula cheese spread. It dosent need to be in the fridge.

Thank you for the information. I assumed it would be in a storage cupboard somewhere within the hospital. Bit silly really given the quantities that would be needed in an emergency situation.

Printing this off to put on the fridge.
Buying A little an often

Im looking forward to looking up the solar radios available.

Thanks Marsaline !

The other thing to do is to buy food grade jerry cans and then just store water from the tap and change it every 12 months. If you change it in the summer you can use the water to water plant pots in the garden.

If there was a water issue one of the first things to do is to fill your bath and then use this water gradually for washing and cleaning teeth, scooping it out with a jug.

That sounds like a nightmare.

Thank you for this thread @seriouslessness

Will be getting back in the habit of having having a full tank of fuel in the car. You use the fuel anyway so topping up when half empty isn’t a big deal.

I'd never heard of these - what a good idea! Adding to Amazon basket!

Thanks for sharing.

I was put off keeping lots of water in in plastic bottles at first, thinking the only way to keep it in date would be for us to keep drinking and replacing those bottles all the time as they got close to their dates, and I didn't want all the microplastics. Then I realised we could just use up water that's getting out of date in other ways than by drinking, so now we have some cheap 4x2 litre packs from supermarkets as our water for 72h. Very cheap and I'll be fine drinking them in an emergency, regardless of the microplastics, but used in other ways when it's not an emergency and I just need to use up out of date bottles.