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Comment by codingdave | Hacker News Reader

A 3 month supply has always been the sensible position. It came in handy when the pandemic hit. It came in handy the last time gas prices went so high that supply lines were threatened. It comes in handy if you lose a job and need to curtail spending for a few weeks. It even comes in handy if you get a surprise visit from family and need to whip up a meal 3 times the size you thought you would need that night.

There are many reasons that having some surplus can stabilize your life, and they are not all about societal-level disruptions.

This is also why it is such a problem that so many people do not have the resources to do this.

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I was going to comment, but this is what I was going to write.

In addendum, one does not need to go overboard in their prepping, or even seem like they're prepping. When my wife and I started prepping 4 years ago (before pandemic, before etc. etc.) we just began buying a little bit extra in our weekly shop. Cans last forever, sugar lasts forever if kept dry. Nobody's going to notice if you buy a big cube of toilet paper one week, then another the next week, and suddenly you have a 3 month supply.

Watching the news is honestly optional, and for me only brings anxiety. There's always going to be crap going on in the world and it's always going to be sensible to have some extra packed away.

If you happen to live in the USA, the Mormons have what they call Home Storage Centers, where I believe you can go in with your own food and use their equipment to preserve it, or you can buy food from them already preserved. Ask your Mormon friends, they're taught to prepare.

P.S. Some other, non-world-ending reasons to have a stash: Friend calls and tells you they're in desperate need of food, you can raid the cupboard and take over an emergency hamper without having to spend. Rains cut off your only bridge to town for a couple of days (happened to me recently). Floods, fires or drought in other parts of the country cut off supply chains for a couple of days, and while others are stripping the shelves bare, you can stay at home and avoid the doorbusters. Lots more reasons, and you don't have to be worried about world events to have it make sense for you.

Yeah, I've only just recently come to see how sensible it actually is from just a daily life point of view.

There is nothing sensible about a 3 month supply of food and water. A typical family should have 10L of water per day (just for fluid intake). A 3 month supply would be ~250 gallons. That alone is impractical. On average, adults eat something like 2.5 lbs of food per day, call it 8 lbs for a family and say you lean toward dense things like beans (not rice) and you only need 5lbs per day. That's still almost 500 lbs of food for a 3-month supply.

I wouldn't consider anyone storing that much food or water to be "reasonable".

Share with us what size your home is that makes it unreasonable?

I live in a big farmhouse in the country, with multiples wells, barns, and pantries, so storage is not a concern at all. But I could see where it would be a problem for smaller homes and apartments.

> A 3 month supply would be ~250 gallons. That alone is impractical.

250 gallons is just under 1½ cubic yards. It could easily fit in a closet.

250 pounds of rice fits into 4.8 cubic feet. It could easily fit into a shelf.

250 pounds of beans fits into 4.2 cubic feet. It too could easily fit into a shelf.

You would also need fuel for 90–180 cookings, but that too will fit into a relatively small area. Everyone with a home (this is part of why so many folks like a home!) and most people with an apartment could find enough spare space for three months of the bare essentials. Certainly everyone who has a place to live has enough space for 30 days' worth.

3 month supply of everything is very expensive

Is it? It always seemed like more of a cash flow question to me. You buy whatever you are going to use, put it at the back of the shelf, and grab the thing you bought 3 months ago. Clearly, we're talking about only non-perishables here. But the goal of a 3 month supply is not a hoard in a closet that is pulled out in an emergency, but a flow of goods through your normal life. You build up to the supply a bit at a time, so it is never a full 3 month purchase, but a slow steady growth until you hit your goal.

To add to this: Buy in bulk when it goes on sale and replace individual units as consumed. No need to buy it all right away when you can slowly acquire bulk bargains whenever the opportunity arises.

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