Civilian MREs section updated!

Post by **kman** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 12:11 pm

The new Civilian MREs section is now live. The old pages were severly out of date so this new one has been updated with four currently available vendors:

Ameriqual aPack
MREStar
Sopakco Sure-Pak
Wornick Eversafe

I actually had a chance to review a case of each of these MREs so there ought to be a lot of useful information there - and lots of pictures.

Post by **DIRTYDAVE** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 1:47 pm

Nice to see a major update like this. I enjoyed the one on Fake/Wanna Be/Homemade MREs...that was amusing.

DangerousDave · Post by **DangerousDave** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 3:19 pm

Nice job with the update. CTD is still hawking some kind of cheap BS cases, but they have heaters. Ad says 3 diff. entrees in the case of 12.

Post by **kman** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 4:33 pm

Thanks for the tip, DangerousDave - I'll have to check them out and make sure I have some example pictures from them.

slister33 · Post by **slister33** » Mon Feb 19, 2007 10:26 pm

Wow I never knew there were this many civilain mre companies and they all look so good. Thansk for the pros and cons.

donelurkin · Post by **donelurkin** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 4:10 am

Nice work, Kman. I know a lot of people who are hinky about the allegedly, supposedly, black market nature of MRE buying who want to get some Earthquake/disaster supplies without wondering about bending/breaking the law. Your new descriptions are really helpful to those folks.

I was wondering, what happens if you add plain water to one of those "salt-water-only" heaters. Nothing? Has anybody tried it? From a corporate standpoint, I can see why they want to avoid the hazardous label, but I like the idea of using any old h20 to heat my meal...

Post by **kman** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 9:18 am

donelurkin, I'd be hard-pressed to explain chemically exactly how an FRH works (but that's a good idea for a future website page) but my understanding is that salt and water are two of the ingredients that need to be in there for the exothermic reaction to occur. Standard military FRH's have the salt included in the FRH so all you have to do is add water.

In order to make civilian MREs less hazardous to ship, the FRH developer (Innotech/TrueTech/Zestotherm) removed the salt from the heating element.

So my guess is that if you only added plain water to one of these heaters, you just get a cold, soggy heater.

Don't forget what happens when you ship a cargo container full of FRH's and get a moisture-leakage problem:

Meals: Ready to Explode

donelurkin · Post by **donelurkin** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 11:38 pm

Meals Ready to Explode: Wow! I had never seen those pics before. Great link. I always sort of thought the hazard angle was overplayed, but maybe not...

Post by **kman** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 11:40 pm

Yeah, when it comes to maybe 12 FRHs in a case of MREs, that doesn't sound too hazardous. But when you pack in tens of thousands of FRHs into one small container, it can be a real mess.

dirtbag · Post by **dirtbag** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 2:30 am

There's a video somewhere showing a shipping container full of FRH's going off...