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Comment by bigDinosaur | Hacker News Reader

Ignoring unrealistic preparations for most of us (such as bunkers and whatever else), an adequate supply of food and water to handle disruptions to logistics for a realistic amount of time must surely be the lowest hanging fruit (e.g. a month?). This is fairly trivial if you aim for things like rice and pasta, and if the grid goes down for longer than a month a lot of us are dying regardless of how we prepare.

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In Oregon, after some severe forest fires, ice storms that shut down whole towns, and the possibility of a Cascadia Subduction Zone event (ie, ~9.0 earthquake) They recommend keeping supplies for 2 weeks to allow time for local areas to get regular supplies of food, water, etc. https://www.oregon.gov/oem/hazardsprep/pages/2-weeks-ready.a...

The problem with that advice is that anyone who could bring you supplies is also suffering from the same problems you are.

Nothing is perfect,but 2 weeks is better than 0 weeks, and enough for a wide array of circumstances

Homes being prepared also dramatically reduces the need for distributed aid to these people. That could mean that labour to restore minimal infrastructure is more available. Feeding people in situations like that takes immense effort.

For a world affecting CME, it might take a month but a 9.0 magnitude earthquake is not going to destroy the entire world, so you don't need a years worth of food before help arrives. we're talking about a little extra bit of water and food, not an underground bunker. Help from outside the affected area will be coming.

The water seems like the hard part. Are there any tricks for cheap, safe hydration for a family?

I guess we could just start building walls of unopened water bottles in our basement…

(In my teens I saw a family friend had a bag full of food supplies. I asked someone if that was a prep bag, and they said yes. I thought they were a bit weird. Now I’ve come full circle browsing Amazon for cheap doomsday food.)

I used to be a logistics officer for an Infantry battalion.

Most of the comments down thread underestimate water consumption. Depending on the climate, you'll want the following daily quantities [1]:

- 2-3 gallons for drinking

- 1.5 gallons for hygiene (can skip for a while)

- 0.5 gallons for food prep

The planning factor for military operations was 8 gallons per person per day. Water is heavy—8 pounds per gallon—and acquiring, storing, and moving it is a large effort.

[1] https://cascom.army.mil/g_staff/g3/TTD/Products/QM-How-to-Ha...

> 8 pounds per gallon

It never occurred to me that people needed this spelled out, but I guess it's simpler in most of the world where 1L = 1kg.

I don't think you can blame inch-pounds for this one- even though we rationally know it is heavier than most materials we don't "think of" water as heavy because modern society gives us the luxury of seldom having to handle more than a thirty minute or so supply of it at once.

then again, anyone with a garden or balcony that has to be watered with a watering can can [sic] attest to how heavy a little bit of water is. If you have a small 100m² garden and it rains a modest 1mm (per m² that is) that's 1L/m² equivalent to 1kg/m² or 100kg total mass of water. When it has rained 1mm people call it "three drops of rain" and they will have to water their plants anyway. That's already 10 cans @ 10L each to lug around.

The other kind of people who know about the weight of waters are people with campers / trailers and people with fish tanks in their apartments. The maximum allowable size for a fish tank in the middle of the room is not that much.

I wasn't actually commenting on the "heavy" part but the "8 pounds per gallon" part. I can do these conversions on demand but, besides never being the native way I think personally, there are simply more numeric conversions you have to do when you use this system whether or not it's native to you.

>> 8 pounds per gallon

> It never occurred to me that people needed this spelled out, but I guess it's simpler in most of the world where 1L = 1kg.

It's easy in gallons and pounds, too, if the correct gallon is used: 10 pounds per imperial gallon of water, by definition.

It's just as simple, frankly. A gallon is four quarts, each of which is two pounds of water. A quart is two pints: and a pint's a pound, the world round (Yes, most of us are aware of the irony of that couplet).

These are all things which are generally known to Americans. But HN has an international audience, for whom "gallon" is presumably somewhat vague.

> 8 gallons per person per day. Water is heavy—8 pounds per gallon

The average person needs far less than 65lbs (30kg) of water per day, which is a third of the average male weight in the US.

By medical standards humans need more like 8lbs (under 4l) per day for men and 6lbs (under 3l) for women. Less if your rationing and not exerting yourself.

The normal amount in disaster preparedness is 1gal per person per day. The problem with the larger amounts is that people see they need huge amounts and don't do anything. Better to get started storing 5-7 gal for each person.

The way to allow for extras is to store water for a longer length of time. If recommended value is two weeks, and it is in my area, then a month is a good buffer.

OP’s factoring includes washing, food prep, all that other stuff.

1.28gal for toilet flushing the most efficient toilets. 1.6gal for normal and it can be worse for older ones.

I was on a hike that recommended 1 gallon to complete it for 5 miles round trip.

I’m sure there is a method to the madness of 8 gallons per person that isn’t easy to see. There is a lot of rounding up with the military also.

1.5 a day for washing is hilariously wasteful. Use some wet wipes for crying out loud!

How do you wash your clothes and dishes with wet wipes?

Also you need to clean your home - you don't want to get sick in a catastrophe scenario.

8 ga of water per person per day is completely insane in disaster scenario. 2-3ga for drinking a day? Medical professionals recommend less than 1 for a normal person.

Keep in mind military operations generally aren't supposed to be disaster scenarios. And someone marching 10+ miles a day in full kit, possibly through heavy terrain or while under fire, is probably going to sweat a lot more than a normal person.

I’d you’re not doing anything. But if you’re doing physical effort then you’ll need to drink a lot more that 2–3L a day.

Walmart sells 5 gallon water totes for $15. that is essentially 5 days for one person. We have a few on hand (family of 4 plus dog) and every six months or so, I empty them, clean them, and re-fill them. Also, there are gravity filters that work great if you have things like creeks near you.. Berkey Filters are pretty good for filtering out contaminants, as well as 2-bag gravity filters that are really popular with backpackers because you can fill the dirty bag up, hang from a tree, and do other things while the clean bag fills.. (not an endorsement, but their pictures show nicely how they work) https://www.platy.com/filtration/gravityworks-water-filter-s...

I've got one of these in my garage. It provides a lot of piece of mind knowing water is solved for. I not a "prepper" by any means, but, realistically I need water every day or I will die. Spending a few hundred to ensure I don't die from dehydration during a natural disaster seems worth it.

https://www.surewatertanks.com/collections/products/products...

If there is no AC, and you are exerting yourself a lot (no car or transportation is down, more work to prepare food, even having to take a dump outside), 5 gallons is barely enough for one person to drink per day. You'll be sweating a lot more in those conditions.

Another example is food in winter months. During a disaster, even with winter gear, your houee may not be heated. If it is -20C inside, your body will need more calories.

If you're having to go outside to cook, to expel waste, and maybe even to go find snow to melt for water, you're going to need 3x your caloric intake.

You have to plan for worst case usage per day, not best.

> 5 gallons is barely enough for one person to drink per day.

OK, no. If you're running a marathon, in hot weather, you're at maybe a liter per hour. Unless you plan to run 20h marathons and the sun never sets, 5 gallon is well beyond drinking needs.

And unless you're able to exert yourself at that level at all, this isn't the "worst case", this is pure fantasy.

And if you're preparing for -20C in your house, I recommend investing in insulation, not more calories stored away. (I also question 3x, the figures I've seen point to 2x, with exertion somewhat counteracting cold)

If you drink ~19 litres (5 US gallons?) of water every day you will not survive long. That’s about an order of magnitude more than is recommended under normal non-strenuous conditions.

I drink may be two liters of water per day. Unless Google lies to me, 5 gallons is almost 20 liters which would be enough for 3 weeks for me with rationing.

I'll second Berkey Filters. While a full Berkey setup may seem expensive, the filters themselves and not the housing is the important part.

You can also use the filters with alternative housings that are far cheaper if aesthetics aren’t a concern. I’ve seen people use food safe 5 gallon buckets for example. It’s much cheaper and works just as well in emergency situations. You do need to be careful about light penetration of the translucent bucket wall.

Another cool thing is that you can make (in a pinch, I wouldn’t recommend this over berkey filters) filters from the same type of bulkheads berkey uses attached to home-made ceramic filters. They work remarkably well in emergencies and are trivial to make if you’ve got clay and a hot fire. There’s definitely trial and error involved for getting perfect seals, and some advanced DIYers I’ve seen used glazing to create a more easily sealed rim which can have a plastic tube jammed into it for a friction fit, which then attaches to the inner part of the bulkhead.

Totally unnecessary if civilization is working but awesome if things go sideways and you’re out of filters. There might be better methods too, I haven’t looked into it for years.

Backpacking water filters aren’t all that expensive and work fine with most water sources. Wouldn’t produce enough to shower in but certainly enough that you could survive in a disaster.

I've got an assortment of backpacking/camping water filters, but don't live especially near a water source, so my days would revolve around walks to the nearest creek. (2 km away) A cargo bike would help a lot there.

If the municipal water is still functional but non-potable, a LifeStraw Max gets you effectively unlimited water on-demand for most sources of contamination.

You could collect rainwater, but realistically water outages are usually not "the taps are dry", but rather "the water treatment plant failed so we can't guarantee the water is safe to drink."

> You could collect rainwater, but realistically water outages are usually not "the taps are dry", but rather "the water treatment plant failed so we can't guarantee the water is safe to drink."

This happened literally last month in the region where I live, and yes "the taps are dry" is exactly what happened.

The water treatment plant staff detected high levels of toluene in the river which feeds the plant, so as a preventive measure, they shut down the whole thing. It took several days until they managed to get the toluene levels in the river low enough that adding activated charcoal to the water intake could get rid of the rest. In the meantime, there was no water being pumped into the system, and once your building's water tank ran dry (the size varies depending on the building), there was no water anymore (unless you hired a water truck to bring water from a nearby city).

And that's not even the first time this kind of thing happened around here. A couple of years ago, another water treatment plant in the same region (fed by a different river) had trouble due to high levels of geosmin in the river, and they also had to shut down for a while. The result was the same, taps running dry once the building water tanks get empty.

Not to mention that pumping water needs lots of electric power. Not only at the water treatment plant, but several other places in the system need to move water against gravity, or increase its pressure.

That seems to be pretty optimistic with respect to geography.

Consider: "The pumps aren't working and there's nothing left up inside the local water-tower."

Then you'd have to travel to get any appreciable amount of water before even starting to filter it.

I do collect rainwater! (In the summer months, at least.) Have a system cobbled together based on bluebarrelsystems.com

Though disaster preparedness and water efficiency are a bit at odds. For the former I'd want to keep all my barrels mostly full, but for the latter I want to keep them empty enough that rainfall events aren't overflowing them and wasting water.

I would probably want a Gravi-stil as relying on filter mediums has a built-in expiration date (or # of gallons).

Sure, but even with my regular water usage, the LifeStraw Max filters would last me over a year, and it works via water pressure. There isn't really any disaster scenario where I'm remaining in my home and need to purify water via burning wood.

distillation allows separation of water from not water.

mud or damp vegetation can be a water source.

I wouldn't think backpacking water filters would help much in for getting water from rivers / ponds in an urban/suburban environment? They'd take care of particulate matter and microbes but I doubt they'd do much for chemical contaminants.

Also, most filters can filter bacteria and cysts, but can't filter out viruses. Many say viruses are not an issue in the backcountry (but I still use purifying tablets), but if you're taking water from a suburban stream during a disaster, I'd definitely want to make sure I'm not ingesting whatever viruses the guy upstream deposited when he used the stream as a toilet.

Viruses do not survive in the open air well because they don't have a hybernation mechanism as opposed to bacteria

> The water seems like the hard part. Are there any tricks for cheap, safe hydration for a family?

You already have the equipment for that. Your existing hot water heater stores enough drinking water for a month at least, probably more if you ration carefully.

we got the smaller 42 gallon one, and.. with two people and a pet... it might last a couple weeks tops, I'd think, if we rationed (~2-3 gallons per day?)

I don't think I've ever drunk two gallons in a day in my whole life. Sedentary survival needs in reasonable climates are maybe a third of that.

Go hiking in 35 degree weather on Mallorca, you'll easily exceed that.

But that's not really disaster-relevant, no.

The genius move I heard of was to throw a few 5-gal jugs of water up in your attic (!!!). It's relatively shelf-stable, standardized size, and "in case of emergency" you can even use it as a gravity-flowed spout to fill smaller containers below.

I've taken to trying to have a minimal set of 4 one liter steel water bottles hung in the closet (grab + go) all the time. So convenient to be able to "just grab some water" on the way out the door, and is the start of a solid emergency prep station.

If it's kept in plastic containers, it's probably only good for a year or so before enough stuff leaches into the water that it'll last off and funky. The time period decreases significantly if your attic gets hot (like a lot of them do).

I want my regular drinking water to be as free of microplastics as possible, but is contamination from plastic containers dangerous enough to be of any concern during an emergency situation?

In that kind of emergency, I'd probably be satisfied with safe-but-distasteful as opposed to unavailable.

If one is going to do that, I'd strongly recommend putting them in some kind of basin that can hold the water if it escapes from the jugs, or sturdier containers, or both.

At least in the US, water jugs are generally very flimsy. An attic is likely to have wide temperature variations throughout the year, and leaky water jugs up there could cause some expensive damage.

Yeah we had plastic jugs in our cool basement leak all over the concrete floor — I can’t imagine the disaster that would be to have plastic jugs in my 140F attic with resultant leaking down from the ceiling

storing large quantities of water is not trivial maintenence.

its better to be able to sanitize required quantities on demand.

One option is to do what quick-service restaurants (e.g., Subway) do for chips, cookies, drinks, etc.: keep a hefty supply of product on hand, but consume it first-in-first-out (FIFO, like a queue). During times of stability (when supplies are available), add new supplies to the "back" while you consume from the "front".

Have the local water delivery company drop off 5 jugs a year

I've got a 1000 litre / 250-ish US gallon rainwater collection tank. While I wouldn't want to start there for drinking water, it would do for quite a while if I boil it.

We do get power failures, so it's mostly been for some garden watering, and being able to flush our toilets during an outage. We're on a well, and the pump needs 220v. I suppose I could get a better generator too, ours only does 120v.

You can just use a transformer to re-create the 240 for your pump if the power/load is otherwise fine

Especially as an autotransformer it's pretty cheap (should be about 50$).

That's true! It hasn't been a huge issue, we tend to mitigate basically by filling some pots with water when a storm is coming. (Usual outages happen in high winds, we have overhead lines and many trees.)

The cheapest way is to find some cheap, food-safe container(s). Put it into your basement and change out the water every 3-6 months.

55 gallon rain barrels can often be found subsidized and therefore cheap.

Keep a bunch of camping iodine drops around and you are set.

> Are there any tricks for cheap, safe hydration for a family?

Live near a lake, stream, etc. and enough firewood to boil water.

High water tinned foods will help a lot.

A bag of pool shock and how to use it safely to treat water is fairly easy and cheap.

Dig a well.

You have to have the right kind of ground to drill with this. I think lots of gravel and rocks won’t work well. Never used it myself but was considering it in the past.

https://www.drillawell.com/complete-kit

Also a small camping stove with a couple of gas cartridges to ensure you can cook your rice and pasta.

Or with an adapter hose you can connect a standard propane tank. If you get the right connector bits, you can use propane with either a dual-burner Coleman-like stove, or with a minimal Jetboil-like backpacking stove.

With a different adapter one can refill camping canisters from a standard propane tank. One "usually" gets away with refilling empty canisters, but these aren't legal for transport in an automobile. Presumably with reason, as in the odds aren't as good as skydiving. I recommend the DOT approved:

Flame King Refillable 1LB Empty Propane Cylinder Tank

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MM3GCVO/

It offers some nuanced controls e.g. to avoid overfilling.

I'm really curious where that presumption comes from. There are tens of thousands of things that are prohibited due to saftyism.

If you understand pressure Regulators and can hook up a BBQ, [is it really] more risky than skydiving

Edit: Switched a safety assertion to a question

I'm not entirely clear on what your question is, but reused single-use propane canisters are lesser for three reasons.

1. The propane they are manufactured with is carefully dried, but propane out of bulk tanks is not. The single use tanks have thinner walls with less corrosion protection because the high-end propane doesn't need it.

2. The safety over-pressure valve on those tanks has similar design constraints and may corrode shut with un-dried propane. Sometimes people damage those valves while refilling.

3. It's easy to overfill those little tanks such that high temperatures can cause over-pressure problems. Due to (1) and (2) the built-in safety measures for refillable tanks cannot be assumed.

I was questioning the idea that having a refilled tank in your car is more dangerous than skydiving. I think it is fair to presume it has some non-zero risk.

I was questioning if that risk is meaningful, or if it is like a prop 65 warning on every building you enter, and most products you purchase.

Googling around I was able to find 1 death associated with refilling a DOT-39 container [1], which is scary shit. However, it seems to be caused by a poor coupling, refilling inside, with an ignition source. This could have happened with any container including a certified refillable one.

https://lni.wa.gov/safety-health/safety-research/files/2016/...

Yeah I looked into those, but in practice it seemed easier to just get a 5lb propane tank for camping that I get refilled at the same place I fill my 20lb tanks. (Plus I'm not clear about the legality of the Flame King ones in Canada, with the result that there aren't any reputable sellers.)

If I really need to go light I'm carrying isobutane canisters or using an alcohol stove.

Keep some oats, you can eat them raw.

That’s an interesting point, I hadn’t considered that.

It should be noted for other readers, that it’s processed oats that have been treated with steaming and an extended heat treatment that are safe to eat as is. That said, “overnight oatmeal” is still not recommended.

The steaming and heating steps allow oats to be shaped, modifies the flavor, kills the many possible pathogens present (like ecoli and salmonella) and deactivates enzymes that would cause spoilage.

Truly raw grains should not be eaten. For example in the US the biggest danger of food poisoning from eating raw cookie dough, typically comes from the flour not the eggs. Incidentally, simply baking flour does not render it safe until moisture is added: https://ag.purdue.edu/news/2021/04/Home-kitchen-heat-treated...

I should also add that things like dry kidney beans contain toxins that need to be soaked and heated to boiling for a sufficient amount of time to destroy, otherwise even just a few can cause severe intestinal distress.

Incidentally, simply baking flour does not render it safe until moisture is added: https://ag.purdue.edu/news/2021/04/Home-kitchen-heat-treated...

That's not what the cited article says. Instead, it says:

“But it’s not that simple in flour because Salmonella is more heat resistant when moisture is low. We still need more research data to confirm how hot you’d have to get the flour or how long you’d have to hold it at that temperature to make the flour safe to eat.”

You said "baking does not render flour safe". The article says we still need more research about "165 degrees", and does not even say baking flour at 165 degrees is unsafe. In other words, it could render it safe, we just don't apparently know.

Good points, hadn't thought of contamination at that level.

>the grid goes down for longer than a month a lot of us are dying regardless of how we prepare.

This. When trying to make provisions for even modest disruptions, you quickly realize how herculean a task it is to be truly prepared. Unless you're already a self-sustaining farmer with a well/water source and other resources or (ideally) billionare-bunker capable, you can see how prepper-ism becomes a lifestyle beyond prepping for a relatively short period.

Making a choice between living life as it currently is and being prepared to survive indefinitely is a hard fork in the road.

If you are in the US, the best preparation you can have is to be able to relocate during an emergency. Do not get stuck in Katrina so to speak. Having transport to other parts of the country is the best bet.

Not sure if and how modern cars with all their electronics might be affected. Also maybe have some paper maps and a compass somewhere (and know how to use them!) and don’t purely rely on GPS.

Also trash bags to shit in. Put it in your toilet, close the lid on it, boom you can shit in the comfort of your bathroom in a relatively sanitary way.

I guess that's one upside of living off of city water / sanitation. In my circumstance I wouldn't have a change of living due to well water pump being easily run from solar collected electricity. It would only have to run the pump a few times a day to keep the well bladder tank primed. Same thing for the mound system as the pump only needs to run a few times a day during normal operations. This could just be run once at the end of the day to bring the final holding tank down to a normal level.

I'm in the same boat, and have a lot of power failures. So when I replaced my tank, I made sure I went for a 80gal size / 40 gal badder. I also upped my pressure from 30/50 to 50/80, so that I have more pressure in there regardless.

But I've noticed a disturbing trend. A lot of people now have "continuous" pump/tank setups. A little pressure tank the size of a 20lb BBQ propane tank, just to allow for pressure stabilization, and a weaker pump. I guess cost is the motivator.

Sad, really.

I had an irrigation guy try to sell me on the "continuous" pump setups. While you minimize some of the internal infrastructure - I agree with your take. The continuous system puts a ton more strain on the pump. The other piece is lift - even at 70 psi water pressure diminishes quite a bit if you're traveling three floors (basement, 1st, 2nd).

Definitely sad.

My prep kit is my camping gear

- water purification/iodide tablets - Sawyer mini (life straw works too) to filter the water - rations - camping stove, white gas, waterproof matches, lighter - I may or may not have a firearm and may or may not bring it when me and my non-white partner go camping in eastern Washington/forks .... - Tanked water heater for potable water - fire extinguisher (granted I leave that in the car when camping) - poop bucket - solar panel+back up battery, assuming they survive any issues with the storm. I'm hoping a townhouse has enough barriers to protect against radiation given I keep the camping gear in the basement

I should probably print out some maps of things like resoviors, ports, and other critical infra/services in my area at some point.

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