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Comment by jfengel | Hacker News Reader

72 hours of water is pretty uncommon. You can get away with it when there is running water, but if you can't count on that in a crisis, you might get very thirsty.

More people have 72 hours of food, but perhaps not all the time. They might buy a week's worth on Monday, but by Saturday they won't have 72 hours left.

It's also not uncommon for European city-dwellers to buy food more frequently. They have less storage, and they can buy fresh food every day. The French are famous for buying bread every single day. (I once asked a French AirBnB host if she could leave two days worth of bread for me, since I had to be up super early on the second day, and she looked at me like I had two heads.) Others have practically no kitchen at all, and eat all of their meals out.

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72 hours worth of food is literally no food if the goal is just to stay alive for 72h until help arrives and you get supplies. Basically no one will starve after 3 days unless they’re already in a hospital.

you're forgetting about pets.

Which pet owner doesn’t have 3 days of food in store though? That’s not really something you need to specifically stockpile because at least the cat and dog owners I know always have huge bags of food which last many weeks.

So for the humans, you don’t need any food, and for the pets, you probably have it anyways.

(And also, some pets are arguably low-priority in a real war situation. Cats and dogs maybe not, but stuff like guinea pigs might be.)

they can eat their owners

> 72 hours of water is pretty uncommon

I literally have 72 hours of soda just sitting around. Hell, probably a few weeks of soda at least. There's also a bunch of pure water, too.

Also. You can go 72 hours without drinking any water at all... worst that'll happen is you'll get dehydrated, but dehydration isn't always immediately fatal. As long as you were drinking healthily before the 72 hours.

> The French are famous for buying bread every single day.

Because standard French bread doesn't keep, or at least does not taste as good, after half a day or so.

But the French will generally still have a few kilograms of pasta, rice, semolina and flour in their cupboards.

I have also never met anyone who ate most of the meals outside, except maybe a few particularly "social" students.

But it does taste a whole lot better! LOVE getting fresh bread when im on holiday in France

A single tank hot water heater provides 72 hours of drinking and cooking water in many cases, for what that's worth.

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