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Comment by Johnny555 | Hacker News Reader

Feasible, but realistic for most people?

A can of beans has around 350 calories, a pound of uncooked rice has 1700 calories

Assuming you want to avoid losing weight, you'll want around 2000 calories/day.

So you'll need 180 cans of beans and 180 lbs of rice. A 5 gallon bucket of rice weighs around 40 lbs so that's 5 5 gallon buckets.

And you'll want more than rice and beans, so you'd want to store more than that.

I don't think many people realistically have the space, money, or inclination to store that much food, especially families.

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Firstly, I have a modestly sized apartment, and even for me storing ~100 kg of rice would not be particularly difficult. Its quite compact if you get stackable plastic containers - I just used those to pack a few hundred liters of clothes.

Secondly, the idea is not to survive apocalypse - even having a week's supply will enable you to weather the worst of it, and give you confidence. I think it's an investment well worth it.

But it's not just "100 kg" of rice - it's 100kg of rice and 100kg of beans (or other foods). That's going to seriously eat into your closet space.

I'm not the one that recommended storing 6 months of food, I was replying to that post saying it's unrealistic. I keep 2-3 weeks of food (and 1 week of water) stashed away for an emergency.

I was actually thinking about the water issue and that's much harder. How much water do you store? Many houses in uk have storage heaters, it's a 100+ litre tank with an electric heater. It would probably double up as an emergency water storage?

I just have 10 gallons of water, plus a water filter -- I live about 200 feet from a freshwater lake, so I'll have access to water.

Actually, I have 2 water filters, the primary one is a LifeStraw Family that claims to be a purifier that can filter both bacteria and viruses and will last for 5000 gallons), and I have a small hiking filter (a katadyn, I think) and some purifying tablets as well.

I also have a "WaterBob" bathtub water bladder so if there's a disaster where I still have water and think I might lose it (like if there's an earthquake+power failure, I might have water for a few hours), I can fill it and store 60 - 80 gallons of water.

Oh, and like you, I have a tank style water heater so have 40 gallons (150 liters) of water in my hot water heater that will probably be salvageable unless the earthquake knocks it loose from its straps or there's a water contamination issue (which the filter will probably work for). In that case, the house may not be livable either, so I'll probably be in a shelter anyway.

This was all pretty cheap, excluding the hiking filter (which I owned anyway and cost over $100), I paid around $80 for everything.

I just looked online and the Lifestraw is selling for $170, I paid less than a third of that price, might be a lot of people buying them now so inventory is scarce.

The reason to stockpile food before the coronavirus is so you don’t have to go to the store and buy groceries. This reason doesn’t apply to water and I don’t think there’s any chance the utilities are going to shut down. Even if everyone gets infected, the death rate is low enough the there will still be people keeping stuff running.

Stockpiling some water makes more sense in California where the water is piped in from far away and we are at risk of big earthquakes that can break those pipes.

In an apartment, your best bet for adding water storage is probably stackable 7 gallon jugs like this: https://www.rei.com/product/618168/reliance-aqua-tainer-7-ga...

A gallon per day per person is enough.

If you have land and want to store more, you could get 55 gallon water barrels.

Be careful with those 7 gallon jugs -- make sure everyone in the household can lift them. My wife can barely move our 5 gallon jugs, I'm considering buying a few 2.5 gallon ones that are easier to move.

She'd never be able to lift a 60 lb 7 gallon jug to carry it upstairs from the garage to our living space, I'm not even sure she can safely tip it over to spill enough water to make it light enough to carry.

20 lbs of Rice at Walmart is about $9.00.

2 lbs of Black Beans is $2.22. (figure it to make 4 cans worth).

So about $190 gets that.

I'd throw in a bunch of Ramen Noodles (pro bachelor tip).

But my favorite is the Shore Lunch Soup Mixes:

https://www.menards.com/main/c-1528988295732.htm?searchTermT...

Lots of variety, cheap, easy to fix meal for 5-6 people.

Great, so you can feed your family of 4 for $800 - where are you going to store that all in your apartment?

I didn't say it's impossible, but not realistic to expect all or even most Americans to stockpile that much food... especially when the government insists everything is under control.

> where are you going to store that all in your apartment?

Right by the ammo locker.

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