Food for Survival/Storage III

I try to store food in less than obvious places. While living in the suburbs of Chicago I stored much of my food in the crawl space and in the attic. Unless a crook has a long time, they will not usually go into these areas. A looter will look for food in the obvious places and then if time allows, maybe some less obvious places, but they prefer to stay on ground level. They may try a second floor, but even that is not usual. They prefer to have at least two ways out in case someone comes in to stop them. This makes even a basement with only one entrance a fairly good spot to store food. One problem with an attic is that things there get very hot and very cold. This limits it to non-perishable items. Other ways of storing food might be a false back wall in a closet with the food behind it or you might install a second water heater, complete with all the fake plumbing but without the water tank inside. A little imagination is all it takes to come up with storage methods that should elude the looters eyes. Remember, looters are usually looking for quick and easy pickings. These types of storage can be used wherever you live, especially if you thing that there might be looters after a disaster. Here is a quick rundown on how food may be handled and stored. Vegetables: a fulltwo year supply, fifty percent canned, twenty percent frozen, fifteen percent in some type of underground storage such as a root cellar or basement, and fifteen percent dried. The fifteen percent stored underground would be root crops that will keep for at least six months without further processing. Fruits: Two year supply, fifty percent canned, twenty-five percent frozen and twenty-five percent dried. Also a two year supply of various kinds of nuts, either home grown or picked in the wild. Meat: two year supply, fifty percent frozen, thirty percent canned and twenty percent dried, jerked and smoked. Meats also include fish. Fish may be canned, frozen, dried or smoked and some can even be jerked. As I said before, you must be ready to can any frozen food should the power go out. You also need to remember to rotate your food continually using the oldest first. Something I have not talked about is water. Water is even more important than food. We can live much longer without food than we can without water. Those in cities or towns depend on a city water supply that could be cut off at any time. Terrorists could poison a cities water supply and you would be left without. In the country most of us depend on electricity to pump our water. Lose the electricity and you lose your water. This should tell us that we need to store some water. First remember that all the water in your water heater is good water. next remember the ice cubes in your freezer. Also if you get empty space in a freezer put in half gallon or gallon containers of water. One, it helps the cost of running the freezer down and two, you have spare water.