I have enough dry beans alone to probably sustain us for about 2 - 3 weeks. If you add the other foods in the house, we'd make it about 6 weeks. Maybe a bit longer if we start eating "non-food" items (i.e. condiments, olive oil, sugar, flour, etc.)
How long can 3 adults survive on 45 quarts of green beans and 10 pints of lima beans? Add about 21 cans of soup, 8 boxes of rice, 8 boxes of cereal and 2 boxes of oatmeal. It might not be pretty once the fresh foods are gone or when the milk, coffee, tea run out...but we could "survive" for several months on all that plus the meat in the freezer.
Me & my husband, a good year at least. I have giant 20lb bags of rice (sushi rice, thai rice, all from a specialty store that can last for years). My baby, oooh, probably just as long but he'd be very very grumpy without his milk
I think my family and I could get by for about 2 months,maybe slightly longer(alot less if my oldest son was home).It wouldn't be the best of meals towards the end,but we could make it work.
Probably about two months or so- we have meat to last us longer than that.... but we would be out of veggies and the one pound of rice we have in the pantry long before that. Though we do have an orange tree outside....
I think I could go at least two months, realistically, and that's not including the big box of Wonderslim products I have in my laundry room (we tried it and didn't like it, but I kept the remaining products as a sort of disaster-preparedness kit since they're vitamin-fortified and last a long time and are reconstituted with just water).
I've been thinking about how wasteful we are with groceries lately, and a couple of times a year I try and force myself to "eat down my pantry" before I go buying any more non-perishables (I allow myself a small grocery budget for fresh foods/go-withs). I'm thinking about doing this again.
With me on plan: Probably a good 2 months since I have lots of frozen lean meats and veggies. We would not be happy after a few days since we would run out of milk, Silk, tofu, and eggs, but we'd be ok.
Off plan: We could survive for probably 6-9 months, possibly more, since we buy our dry goods in bulk and could live on the rice, wheat, quinoa, beans, etc. that are in the pantry for a long time. We might not be very happy with our meals, but we could survive.
Last edited by FitGirlyGirl; 09-08-2011 at 01:38 PM.
For my husband, me, and 18 month old-- 6 months to a year. If I were really trying to make it last and stretch, we could last a long time. It wouldn't always be tasty stuff, but between the freezer and pantry, I have a lot of stuff.
I can in the summer, too, so a lot of the stuff I can is meant to last us a whole year, but some stuff lasts longer. I also coupon shop and stock up when stuff is on sale, so we have a big freezer full of stuff.
I think people would be surprised at how long they could actually "survive"-- most Americans at least have tons of food on hand compared to the rest of the world. It wouldn't be fun, but I'm sure we could all last a lot longer than we think.
I'd miss milk. My in-laws have chickens, so we'd have eggs. Plenty of fresh meat, cause DH can always kill a deer/rabbit/squirrel, etc.
We've been canning lots of tomato juice & soup mix from our garden & neighbor's garden this year.
We also have lots of jams & jellies, mostly wild muscadine & possum grape, but some other berries mixed in. Margarine NEVER goes bad. We'd have to make sourdough biscuits to go w/these items--as long as the flour holds out.
We have "wild" fish in local ponds. Bass, crappie, brim, catfish.
The fall fruits--persimmons, pears, apples, etc. will be ripening soon if they haven't already.
My wife and I have enough food to get us through close to a month I guess as long as we were rationing it out a bit. I keep a lot of soup on hand as I buy in volume when it is on sale since I usually have a can a day for lunch.
We are also Costco shoppers and buy meat in volume, although not nearly as much as when our 4 kids lived here of course.
HOWEVER! after our major power outage of 10 hours last night I may think twice about stocking up on that meat
So glad we had propane in the tank and burgers though last night...just like campin'
Side note: I went through a phase of trying to keep lots of bottled water (gallons, 20 oz. bottles, you name it) in the house in case of emergency. Of course, we always drink the water to keep it rotated.
I've been thinking lately, though, if something were to happen "long term" and we couldn't go to the store and had no clean tap water supply--all that bottled water isn't really going to last very long. Certainly not long enough to keep two adults and two active toddlers healthy.
I'm going to buy a couple of Brita (or similar) pitchers for the house w/extra filters to keep in our emergency kit. I'll still buy bottled water, too. But you can always boil rainwater and/or spring water (I'd have to walk 5 miles to the spring and back, but I could do it for my kids) and then run it through the Brita.
