I wrote:
I definitely think it's a good idea to stock up on at least 3 months worth of food. I started doing that sort of thing just before the whole Y2K thing and haven't gotten out of the habit since.
Based on my own experience, here's what I would recommend for MREs per day per person. For adults, I think 2 per day per person would work fine. Of course, if you're doing strenuous work (chopping wood all day, chasing armed gangs away from your house, etc.), you might need more food to keep you going. But let's just say you're hunkering down and staying close to home. So adults, 2 per day. For children, it'd probably depend on your kids, but you might want to consider 1.5 each. So for you and your wife, you'd need 4 MREs per day and for the kids, you'd need 3 total. So that'd be 7 MREs per day for the whole family. Here's how I'd break it down for 3 months:
2 adults, 2 kids
adults - 2 MREs per day each, 4 MREs per day total
kids - 3 MREs per day total
family per day - 7
family per week - 49 (4 cases)
family per month - 217 (54 cases)
family for 3 months - 651 (162 cases - 3.3 pallets)
As you can see, that's a lot of MREs! You're going to need a lot of storage space for 3 pallets of MREs (48 cases per pallet). And then there's the cost. If by some miracle, you could actually find that many MREs for sale and you could get them for the formerly-average price of $40/case. That would be $6,500 worth of MREs.
I think keeping that many MREs around would be a cool idea but it might not be practical. There are other food options available and maybe a better solution would be a combination of things. Here are some other options:
1. MRE entrees - I have a bunch of cases of these. You can buy them individually or in cases of 72. With just the entrees, you could cut back on how many full MREs you eat a day. Maybe just have one MRE for dinner and an entree and something else small for lunch. You could even eat one for breakfast.
2. Mountain House dehydrated food - are you familiar with Mountain House food? This is a good option for stocking up because you can buy either 1, 2, or 4 serving pouches or a #10 can of the stuff. The cans contain 8-12 servings of food and are ideal for families because you can fix as much or as little as you want. Here's a link to Mountain House's website:
http://www.mountainhouse.com/
There are a few places around the Internet where you can get a better deal than retail price on this stuff. You just missed a nice group buy over at ar15.com. Here's a link to my description of it on the mreinfo.com forums:
viewtopic.php?t=187
This is the 3rd Mountain House group buy they've held so there'll probably be another one soon. Just keep an eye on the right forums there (or on the mreinfo.com forums).
3. Civilian entrees from grocery stores - kind of like the MRE entrees, there are lots of those "individual serving" meals at grocery stores by companies like Hormel and Dinty Moore. Just last night, I saw some entrees like Spaghetti, Salisbury Steak, and Chicken and Rice at Wal-Mart for $1.78 each. The "best by" dates are in 2007 so the things should be good for at least 2 years if not more.
4. Canned goods - when I first stocked up for Y2K, I bought a bunch of canned goods (hadn't discovered the joys of MREs yet). Things like beef stew, vegetables, Spaghetti-Os, Ravioli, etc. The kids will love the stuff and after 2-3 years, it's easy to rotate your stock back into your normal eating life.
5. Rice, beans, etc. - the real die-hard survivalists will tell you to skip all the fancy MREs and heavy canned goods and just buy bulk quantities of rice, beans, flour, etc. You can definitely stock up on a ton of food for pretty cheap this way. Just be sure you know how to prepare everything and be sure to grab lots of spices because weeks and weeks of rice and beans can be very boring.
But like I said earlier, maybe a better method of stocking up food would be a combination of the above items. This is kind of how I accidently have things set up myself. I say "accidently" because I never planned it like this - I just started collecting lots of MREs, I have lots of canned food left over, I also have some big bags of rice and beans, and then I have a ton of Mountain House food coming soon.
If you're looking to stock up fast, that might change how you go about all this. Unfortunately, MRE prices on Ebay are *insane* right now. Before the hurricane, cases were going for about $40-$50. Now they're selling for $80+. And as you can tell from the Mountain House site, they're currently out of stock on most of their items. I'm sure it doesn't help that the ar15.com group buy is buying $64,000 worth of food from them.
If you can afford to wait on the MREs and Mountain House food, then you'll save a lot of money when the prices finally come down. Maybe start out with some canned goods, the rice and beans, and/or the entrees from the grocery store. After you get your first closet full of food, you'll look it and think..."whew...I can feed my family for X days now" and that's a good feeling.
