I am decidedly not a prepper, but what is considered a good amount of food to have on hand in that community? 10 days of food gets you through almost any natural catastrophes. But what does 250 vs 100 days do for you? Perhaps the former gives you enough to get through a winter so you can farm your own food after the thaw?
For anyone interested, obviously a lot of prepper oriented material out there but for budget preparing I found the Mormons, of all groups, had easy and affordable and scalable lists.
Yes, absolutely. Some of the best resources out there are Mormons. Those groups also tend to have great advice on finding good pricing as well.
As to why Mormons tend to be so into it, I have a theory. The Mormons started out very poor (generally speaking), and repeately ended up leaving their homes and starting anew, including at one point in the barren and remote mountain west (where their headquarters are today). Having stores of food and other supplies were literally a matter of life and death and survival. I think that same spirit is still active among them.
It's actually an explicit religious expectation to prep for emergencies. I believe the generally understood requirement is a 3 months supply, but I'm not LDS, so I don't know the details of Mormon practice and variations therein.
What's interesting to me is that Judaism doesn't have any kind of similar requirement. There you also have a history (or at least a stereotype) of having to pick and up and move in response to religious persecution. I wonder if it's because in reality the gaps in time between periods of stability and persecution were often quite large? I don't think Jews have historically seen themselves as a wandering people as much as outsiders have seen them that way.
Mormons, meanwhile, had to move from place to place in quick succession over less than half a decade. It's another reason why LDS Church feels like the ultimate American religion: prepping is baked directly into the religious practice.
The vast majority of Jews made significant geographic moves in the 20th century, either from Europe/Russia or the arab world. Most of them went to North America or Israel.
I think the Utah War comes into play as well. Mormons should score pretty high on a spectrum of how much people consider themselves to be independent of the federal government.
You can go do the rabbit hole of risk scenarios, but you still end up with a list that will look something like (made-up) 100 days of supplies will get me through 80% of the list, and 250 days will get me through 95% of it.
If you want to go down that rabbit hole, start with studying Katrina. Has almost every variation played out within one extensively documented event. Hunker vs leave, severe acute damage (MS) vs persistent 'lessor' flooding (NOLA), figuring out how long you need to evac, and when evac turns into short/medium term relocation or even permanent move.
Yea it's local and not Armageddon, but it provides the framework for how to think about these things, and how relying on faulty assumptions gets you in trouble.
But the real answer to your Q is that you'll start by prepping for 10-day events, then 100-day events, then maybe 250-day events, and you'll start to be able to fill in the gaps of your knowledge yourself. No matter what the risks.
Along the lines of: What good is 250 days of food without X? Where x might be water, fuel, meds, or 'lessor' needs like internet, work/job, social events, etc.
Or what good is 250 days of food if I have to abandon 210 days of that supply to evac?
Those are the types of questions that people answer differently, and you won't start filling in the gaps for yourself until you start small and build from there.
I’m not a prepper either, but 10 days doesn’t seem like a lot, especially when you start dividing it between multiple people. 100 man days of food is 25 days for a family of four (maybe more since kids need less). For a localised disaster like Katrina maybe that would be enough. For a war time scenario, maybe you’d want more.
Just to clarify, I don’t think I’d have enough in the house even for a week at the moment.
This is just speculation, but I could see there being a spectrum. E.g. bags of rice are an easy way to store a ton of calories but aren't very palatable and require you to boil water. On the other hand, survival meals are easy to prepare but expensive.
So perhaps the optimal strategy would be a combination of the two (likely with other options as well such as a supply of dried fruit to provide vitamin C).
> E.g. bags of rice are an easy way to store a ton of calories but aren't very palatable and require you to boil water. On the other hand, survival meals are easy to prepare but expensive.
This is the basis of how my family does things these days.
Post-COVID, we keep about 200# of rice and another 200# of dried beans on hand. We also have corresponding dry seasonings and such on hand. It's cheap, and stores well.
We eat quite a bit of both, but the above stay untouched. Once a year we donate it all to our local food pantry (i.e., "soup kitchen") and replace it. We know that it's useful for them because we work a shift at least once a month; we're not just pawning it off blindly. The donation is a tax write-off, and replacing the whole thing is less than $500.
Before COVID, we did the same but with small quantities. Our experience there showed us that it was in fact valuable to have food and essentials on hand just in case, and it felt justified to spend a bit more money on it in order to have more.
