How to Store Survival Food Supplies
You know you need a survival food supply, but you may not know how to store it. The type of survival food supplies purchased will often dictate how they are stored and how they are rotated to prevent spoilage. The most common types of emergency survival food and recommendations for storage and rotation are reviewed below.
Most survival food kits contain just enough supplies for a single person for up to three days. Supplies of this type should be stored in the trunk of each vehicle and in the emergency travel bag of each family member. The energy bars, containing up to nine 400-calorie meals, can even fit in children’s backpacks, ladies’ handbags and the glove compartment of every vehicle. Short-term survival food kits require little space for storage and often have a shelf life of up to 5 years. Food should be checked regularly to make sure it’s still good, but can’t really be rotated as it’s not part of the normal food supply. Always check to make sure your emergency food supply is still good before you go camping or on long trips.
Many survival food kits are intended to provide families with supplies for a week or more. These are ideal for protection against hurricanes, earthquakes and other natural disasters. As learned from Hurricane Katrina, aid can sometimes take two weeks to reach the hardest hit areas. Grocery stores will not have the food and water supplies needed to support an urban population once trucks and trains can no longer reach the city for resupply. Supplies will dwindle and be completely gone in about three days. Families should have several kits placed in strategic places in the house. This will help ensure that family members can reach food even in the event of a partial house collapse. Supplies often have a very long shelf life, but need to be checked regularly to make sure they are still usable.
Long-term food survival solutions of 3 months or longer require a larger amount of storage space. Some families have reserved an entire room for an extremely large survival food supply. These rooms are often arranged with shelves, with newer items being unloaded to the rear and older items being moved to the front of the shelves. Families that do this are constantly living off their long-term food storage to keep their supply fresh. In a real emergency, food may be more carefully rationed, but it consists of the same items that the family is already used to eating. This is a great way to manage survival food when children are young and may not be willing to eat things, especially in emergencies, that they are not used to eating yet.
Properly storing survival food can mean the difference between life and death for families facing emergencies. If you have chosen to invest in an emergency food supply, be sure to store it properly and check it regularly to make sure your family still has the protection you paid for. The guidelines presented here should help you determine how best to store and rotate your survival foods.