How long could you survive with what is in your house right now?

[3bluellamas]

It seems every day that goes by the world seems more unstable. Its made me think about being better stocked in case of disruption of any kind (whether created by humans or just natural events like severe weather). How long could your family survive if you suddenly had no access to shops (either in person or online)?

I think Im going to eat down the freezer which is full of random things like one stick of rhubarb or a lone pork chop and then try to use the space more effectively to ensure we have a better store.

Yeah about a month with with some very odd combos towards the end.
We'd run out of fresh stiff quite quickly.
We are quite rural and I do keep a very well stocked chest freezer and pantry.

I reckon about 3 months as we have lots of tinned stuff and lots in freezers.

A handful of days max. I’m not a bulk or even weekly shopper, I shop fresh most or every other day.
I’d rather not change that in case of a world disaster.

Probably six months eating well then odd combinations would need to be used. Fresh fruit, veg and eggs would be a problem. I have flour and yeast to make my own bread, freezers full of food to be able to cook from scratch or leftovers/batch meals I can use. All labelled so no surprises. I have a 480 litre water tank. Toiletries and meds continually stocked up.

Long before covid I was a prepper, only I didn't know it. We have several properties so when out doing a shop I bought for each house then if that product was on offer I'd stock up by buying doubles.

It soon mounts up and then I shop from my own stocks. Everything gets rotated when I buy.

The dog wouldn't last a week on his own food. its on my list ti get this week 😂

Bloody ages. I’ve pulses coming out my ears, 2 joints of pork and a leg of lamb in the freezer plus other random proteins, salmon, plenty of carbs.
it’d get boring after a couple of weeks but I’d say about 2 months.

Food? Probably four months; We'd be eating a lot of rice and pasta, though.

We'd run out of loo rolls after three weeks, and the cats would be getting a bit peckish by then. I probably need to stock up.

I was just thinking this earlier on as I put my shopping away.
quite a few days I think. I wouldn’t be serving everyone’s favourite dishes for too many days, but I reckon we could stay indoors for about a fortnight if miglymoglies were marauding in the street outside.
i have a lot of freezer space so often take advantage of special deals and pad out the space with bread (7 loaves at present).
i use an olive oil spread for sandwiches etc but also keep butter (both types) for cooking.
we’re campers so have a good stock of tinned soups, beans etc.
DH is addicted to fried egg sandwiches so we never have less than 10 eggs in the house.
all these thjngs would see us right (but I’d have to guard the eggs).

Food-wise, probably a week tops.

but we have a well-stocked drinks cabinet so could probably drink ourselves to death before the food ran out 👍

Presuming the water stopped flowing from the taps, I'd have to go get river water, and that's probably got stuff in it that would make me sick... I suppose not fatal. Plus the water not flowing means I'd need a latrine in garden but I suppose I can dig that out ok.

Presuming no gas I couldn't cook anything and everything in fridge would go off fast (no electricity). The actual food in house now plus blackberries in the garden (huge crop this year...) would last me no more than ... 10-12 days before I was seriously hungry? if I couldn't cook anything so foods like pasta or dried lentils being pointless.

In case of apocalpyse I imagine everyone would break into corner shops and with the food we looted from there, assuming river water didn't make me too ill and I got a lot of food that doesn't need cooking but stores long time, I'd reckon I could last up to 4 months (?)

Except with no gas the temperatures indoors would be so cold... assuming I didn't join with another household or start sleeping in piles of random women like myself trying to keep warm, it's iffy to be sure if I'd make it thru the winter. So even assuming I could keep getting looted food/whatever, I suspect dead by Feb. unless I find the other bundles of bodies to sleep with to keep warm thru winter anyway.

Maybe I could open my chimney again and scavenge wood, but if living alone I can't imagine getting enough fuel to burn to truly warm the property. Maybe enough to have a fire I could boil water on for drinking and a little cooking I suppose.

we do have a lot of red wine..

my veg garden has been rubbish this year. The strawberries have been useless and whilst Ive had a lot of rhubarb and courgettes, thats about it!

Oh heck forgot about my gin stash although did buy more tonic today 😂

Not even a week! We are moving house soon so there is half a bag of oven chips and some broccoli in the freezer and some pasta in the cupboard!

Only about three or four days because that is when the bread, milk and fruit run out.

That would be a great opening situation for an apocalyptic drama. We'd know that you were in trouble ..

Probably 4-5 months for food. I've got 40 litres of water for drinking in large 5 litre bottles plus a dozen 1 1/2 litre bottles. I've got longlife milk and powder whitener. I've got 2 large freezers of food. One mixed including a lot of fruit vegetables from my garden and the other just meat. I've got a generator in case no electricity. I've got 2 x 2 ring gas hobs for camping and 5 or 6 gas canisters. I've got a lot of toiletries, toilet rolls, and tins of food and dried food like rice, pasta, lentils etc. My adult DS jokes if there is a food shortage or we can't get hold of toilet rolls just get to Mums. I buy toilet rolls in packs of 48 and always have 2 spare packs and 1 on the go. Durong COVID I gave him and 3 of his mates toilet rolls and an old lady next door. I prep and rotate tins and dried food. If anyone ever comes unexpectedly I can always prepare a good meal. I even have Calpol in case DGC need it. I feel uneasy if I run low on my stock of food.

Food-wise I think we could last a month at least. I tend to always have various tins and packets of pasta, rice, lentils and oats etc in the cupboards and we have two freezers. I like to keep cupboards and freezers reasonably well stocked after DH and I both got flu at the same time about 5 years ago and couldn't make it to the supermarket and there were no home delivery slots available for online shopping. Fortunately in that scenario a lovely friend dropped us some food shopping on the front doorstep but since then I've always made sure to have tinned soup in the cupboard and in the freezer a stash of easy meals I can just reheat. I grow fruit and veg in the garden and freeze it so would have plenty of apples, rhubarb, courgettes, green beans and tomatoes.

I do sometimes wonder whether I should keep some large bottles of water in the garage as if the water supply ever went we'd be stuck. If electricity went down we've got lots of candles and matches....and we have gas canisters for the BBQ so could cook for a while.

I’m blown away by these answers - where do you keep it all?!?! I have a normal sized (London) kitchen, I think it’s well-stocked and I only shop weekly, but I think we’d run out of food in between 7 to 10 days absolute maximum. Yes we have a bag of lentils - that could be curry for our family of four for 2 meals. Yes we have a packet of pasta - again one to two meals. We have two tins of beans - so that’s one lunch. We have two boxes of oats - porridge for us for a week. We have four tins of tuna. We have a bag (normal 1 kg bag) or self raising flour and it lain flour. Etc etc. I truly don’t understand where in a normal house you’d keep 20 tins of beans and 6 bags of pasta and 6 bags of lentils and so on and so on?

@SummerInSun we have a larder unit that goes floor to ceiling so that's where all of our dried food is stored but I don't think it is more than say 3 normal kitchen cupboards worth of space.

What makes the difference for us is having a garage so we have a large cupboard and another freezer out there.

Nothing in the freezer except frozen martinis, lemon slices and peas.
10 tins of soup. Ditto baked beans. Lots of pasta. A lot of cheese and crackers.
3 full bottles of gin, 1 of vodka and 12 bottles of wine/ cremant.

As long as we were happy eating a fairly high protein diet, probably for months.

We tend to only have a few days to a week of fresh food. But I have lots of flour, rice, maize meal, a lot of random tinned stuff in the cupboard. We have a least a few weeks of veg and soup in the main freezer. And then we have 3 pigs worth of pork (joints, chops, mince, diced, probably about 500 sausages 😂) in the chest freezer.

We’d maybe not be the healthiest at the end, but we could definitely survive for a few months on that. Plus we have chickens for eggs and could eat them (the chickens, I mean) in a true emergency, I suppose.

I reckon we could manage for 2-3 weeks. Would be some very questionable meals of course, but we wouldn't starve.

About two weeks from the store cupboard, but I have plans to make nettle soup and eat rabbits (wild ones, not pets) if society collapses. We have chickens so will eat lots of omelettes.

You can casserole it. Then him.

No electricity, not long.
Electric still running probably a month or more. Usually have a full freezer, a cupboard full of tinned and jarred foods. Have a dozen bottles of water, loads of beer, wine, gin and tonic water stored in the garage so I'll go happy.
We did buying a camping stove, though no intention of camping. Thought it might be worthwhile purchase in the event of a power cut as we're all electric cooking wise.