WATER FOOD HEATING SAMPLE SUPPLY LIST
Being prepared for long-term scarcity of food, clean water, medications, and other basic essentials of life requires planning, and acquiring and storing of certain items in advance. After an EMP attack, or other disaster, panic buying and looting takes place at the supply stores. You don’t want to be at those places during those times. You want to be prepared in advance.
Also bear in mind that after the banking system goes down, currency (money) may not be worth much. Small-scale barter transactions may become the norm, as people trade what they have for what they need. Things that can become valuable for bartering include food and ammunition.
NOTE: In addition for home preparations described on this page, you DO need a “bug out bag” in your car. Things you’ll need if a disaster hits while you’re away from home, things to help you get back home even if your car won’t start. See our blog article HERE.
Find and store away reference books on survival topics like dressing game and meat preservation, growing a vegetable garden, and canning, first aid, and edible and medicinal wild plants. The best first aid kit is one you make yourself. Pre-fab first aid kits don’t have what you need for long-term survival. They are created to get you by until you can get to a doctor or hospital. After an EMP attack, there may not be any hospitals open long. You need a medical kit, not just a first aid kit.
Here are some things to include in a long-term survival medical kit:
- Gauze pads: all sizes, including s-fold or z-fold for wound packing
- Bandages: all sizes and shapes
- Burn gel and dressings
- Butterfly strips, adhesive tape
- Safety pins
- Ace bangages
- Scissors
- Tweezers
- Latex or nitrile gloves
- Cotton balls and swabs
- Hemostat
- Syringes with needles
- Tincture of iodine
- Potassium Iodide tablets (in case of nuclear attack, take 130 mg/day to counteract radiation effects on thyroid gland)
- Vitamin C crystals (crystals last longer in storage, take 1/4 tsp/day for protection from deadly scurvy)
- Antibiotic ointment
- Thermometer
- Benadryl and other anti-allergy medications
- Sutures (stitches) to sew up wounds
- Blood pressure cuff
- Insect repellant
- Magnifying glass
- Snakebite kit
- Alcohol wipes and rubbing alcohol
Water
Assuming you have safe air to breathe, the next-most important thing for survival is drinkable water. People generally need a gallon of water a day, for drinking and cooking. Most people can’t survive more than a few days without water. In a significant disaster, municipal water supplies may run out pretty quickly. It’s a good idea to purchase a water test kit to be sure your drinking water is safe, because you can’t tell water is safe by looking at it. It’s the invisible microorganisms that can kill you.
If you have a source of water available, you just need to gather it and clean it to make it drinkable. Each filter element in the Big Berkey water filtration system can filter 3000 gallons of water, enough to supply a family of 4 for two years, producing water that’s free from chemicals and bacteria.
For a cheaper, more portable water filtration solution, look at LifeStraws. At about $15 each, a LifeStraw can produce about 800 gallons of clean drinking water.
If you don’t have a suitable filter system, you can filter the water pretty well through sand or even soil. Also useful in water purification are charcoal, activated carbon, baked sand, bed sheets, or even coffee filters. Once the water is clear, it probably still contains harmful microorganisms, so boiling it 5 minutes is necessary to make it safe to drink. Boiling removes the oxygen from the water, so it will taste better if you pour it back and forth between glasses a few times, to aerate it, before drinking.
You can also purify water with a little chlorine bleach, but a bottle of bleach is only potent for about a year, so it’s best to get fresh bleach every year. But it’s really cheap, so it’s pretty cheap insurance…if you can remember to replace your supply when it gets old.
If you do NOT have access to a water supply, like a river or well, you need to stockpile water. “Water bricks” are a good way to store a lot of water, but remember that water is heavy, so a concrete floor is recommended. Each brick holds about 3.5 gallons, and if each person needs a gallon a day, you can see that you would need a LOT of bricks to survive very long. You’ll still need a long-term water source to survive, but the bricks can make a convenient container for gathering water at a nearby lake or river, to purify at home.
Remember that you can also rig up a way to collect rainwater from your roof and channel it into storage barrels or even a swimming pool. But this water should be boiled 5 minutes before drinking.
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food
Next you’ll need a food supply. Most people can live a few weeks without eating, but your strength and health begins to go downhill quickly without a healthy food supply. The easiest way to stockpile food is to buy it in sealed freeze-dried packages. Properly packed food of this type can have a shelf life of 25 years! You just need a place to store it that’s cool and dry, and safe from mice, rats, etc.
A galvanized steel “garbage can” is a good storage container. They aren’t necessarily waterproof, so if you store your food in a basement, put the can up on something to keep it off the concrete floor. Valley Food Storage sells excellent assorted meals. Bought in quantity, their meals can cost about $1.35 per person per day. Their 1-year kit will supply a year of food for one person, or 6 months of food for 2 people, etc.
Of course, if available, you can also supplement your stored food with fresh food you grow in your garden (you need to learn to can and preserve food for winter), fish from our rivers, and game from our woods. But remember that in a county of thousands of people, most of whom have NO stockpiled food at home, with no new food deliveries coming into town for a long time, the rabbits and squirrels will start to disappear quickly.
Grains that have not had their seed coat broken can be stored for a long time, so you can stockpile dried pasta, rice, wheat, beans, etc., but flour and cornmeal won’t last long in storage. Store them in a steel can or other vermin-proof container. Consider stocking some spices, too, because eating plain rice or pasta gets boring fast.
Ideally, to prolong their storage life, store the grains with some “desiccant” moisture absorbers and oxygen absorbers (available at Amazon).
For your vegetable garden, consider getting Survival Seed Vault containing easy-to-grow seed varieties of 100% heirloom seeds sealed for Long-Term Emergency Storage. Once you use them, save seed from your year’s harvest to plant again the next year.
Ten foods you should NOT stockpile…
Heating
For cooking and heating, propane and/or firewood are good choices. A few small tanks of propane can cook a year of food for you, if you don’t waste it. There are also “solar ovens” available that can use reflected sunlight to heat water and cook food in a Dutch Oven.
Consider getting a bio-stove which can both cook using wood, and also generate electricity from the heat, to charge batteries for your shortwave radio.
Also, regarding heating, disaster time isn’t the time to be trying to heat the whole house. Try to limit heating, with a wood stove, to a few rooms to conserve fuel, and consider getting mylar “space blankets” to wrap up in. They will conserve 90% of the heat your body produces.
And forget about air conditioning. Learn to keep your body cool by staying in the shade and resting during the hottest part of summer days, confining our hard work to cooler early morning and evening hours.
If you want electricity during a prolonged outage, you probably can’t depend on a standard generator. Even if it still works, fuel will be hard to come by. Consider solar panels, which work better than windmills in our area of the country for electrical generation. For batteries, get rechargable AA and AAA NiMH batteries with charger. For lighting, use energy-efficient LED bulbs. Keep the batteries, charger, and LED bulbs in a Faraday box just in case they might be damaged if an electromagnetic pulse occurs.
The Eco-Worthy portable 120 Watt 12 Volt solar panels can be used to keep deep cycle batteries recharged. Good batteries are the “Ever Start-Marine Maxx, Marine & RV”. These batteries, plus an “inverter” can give you regular 120 Volt AC power from 12 V batteries. One solar panel set, a couple of 12V batteries connected in parallel (parallel connection keeps the output at 12V, but doubles how long you 
can run your lights and appliances), and a 1000 watt inverter can easily let your run several LED lights at night, plus a small fan for summer comfort and recharging for your AA and AAA flashlight batteries, etc. If you get a good enough setup, you can even run a small refrigerator off battery power all night, with the solar panels recharging them on sunny days.
Sample survival supply list
- For most items, this is about a 2-year supply. Adjust your quantities to match your own household’s needs.
- Be sure to store any electrical devices in a Faraday box if they may contain microcircuits that could be damaged by an EMP (electromagnetic pulse).
- Keep food items in a metal or hardened plastic container so mice can’t get to it in storage.
Category/Item/Quantity/Approx. Cost
Cleaning/Laundry Powder/20 lbs/$41.00
Cleaning/Lysol Spray/2 cans/$10.50
Cleaning/Dawn dish detergent/5 quarts/$25.50
Cleaning/Hand soap/8 bars/$4.00
Cleaning/Bleach/3 gallons $9.00 (begins losing potency after a year)
Category Total: $90.00
Food/Sugar/30 lbs/$15.00
Food/Honey 100 oz./$26.00
Food/Salt/6 lbs/$3.00
Food/Vegetable Oil/2 gal/$17
Food/Coffee Beans/4 lbs/$26.00
Food/Coffee Ground/6 lbs/$22.50
Food/Nestles Quick/2 lbs/$7.50
Food/Peanut butter/4 lbs/$12.75 (begins to go rancid after a year, so store in your kitchen, eat it regularly, replace as needed so you have plenty on hand if needed)
Food/Country Time Lemonade/5 lbs powder/$9.50
Food/French Vanilla Cappuccino/3 lbs powder/$10.00
Food/Rice/80 lbs/$16.00
Food/Dry beans, pinto & great northern/6 lbs/$16.00
Food/Powdered milk/5 gal. equivalent/$15.00
Food/Freeze-dried meals 800 meals/$1,050.00 (1-year supply for 1 person) $1,050 was 2018 price. As of March 2020 this had jumped to over $2,200!
Food/Survival Seed/1/$20.00
Food/LifeStraw water purification/2/$15.00
Category Total: $2,464.25 (accounting for 2020 rate for the one-year freeze-dried food supply)
Medical/Allergy tablets/60/$17.00
Medical/Vitamin C crystals/1 lb/$13.00
Medical/Potassium Iodide 130 mg/30 supply per person, take 1 daily for thyroid protection from fallout radiation
Medical/Isopropol/Alcohol/1/2 gallon/$5.00
Medical/Large bandaids/60/$5.00
Medical/Basic first aid kit/1/$24.00
Medical/Hydrogen peroxide/2 qts/$2.00
Medical/Tylenol caplets/200/$4.00
Medical/Aspirin tablets/500/$3.50
Medical/Ibuprofen tablets/500/$7.00
Category Total: $67.50
Hardware/Epoxy/2 tubes/$6.00
Hardware/Heavy Alum Foil/240 sq ft/$12.00
Hardware/1 qt zip lock bags/110/$4.75
Hardware/1 gal zip lock bags/38/$3.25
Hardware/Kitchen matches/750/$4.00
Hardware/Small matches/320/$1.00
Hardware/Coil Lighter (electric)/1/$17.00
Hardware/Bic lighters/15/$15.00
Hardware/Duck tape/4 large rolls/$10.00
Hardware/13 gallon garbage bags/120/$13.25
Hardware/45 gallon garbage bags/20/$10.00
Hardware/Heavy duty thin rope/50’/$5.00
Hardware/Clothesline cord/50’/$7.00
Hardware/Oil lamps/3/$22.50
Hardware/Spare wick for oil lamps/15 ft/$8.00
Hardware/Lamp oil/3 gallons/$60.00
Hardware/LED light bulbs, 40W & 60W/8/$22.00
Hardware/Jar candles/2/$9.50
Hardware/”Disposable” LED flashlights/7/$7.00
Hardware/T-REX Strong Tape/1 roll/$8.00
Hardware/31 gal. galvanized cans/3/$76.00 (Faraday box and food storage)
Hardware/Super Glue/4/$1.50
Hardware/Desiccant for dry storage/1 gallon/$35.00
Hardware/Hunting knives/2/$50.00
Hardware/Mylar thermal blankets/10-pack/$8.75
Hardware/Reinforced thermal blanket/1/$12.00
Hardware/5-gallon/Solar Shower/1/$9.00
Hardware/Metal foil tape/1 roll/$16.00 (for sealing lid of Faraday box)
Hardware/Hand-crank 10W generator/1/$50.00
Hardware/Marine Deep Cycle 12V batteries/2/$175.00
Hardware/12V “trickle charger”/1/$14.00
Hardware/DC to AC inverter, 1000W/1/$89.00
Hardware/120 W solar panels/1 /$195.00
Hardware/Big Berkey Water Filter/1/$295.00
Hardware/Water Straws/2/$16.00
Hardware/Fishing tackle/Assorted/$12.00
Hardware/2-burner propane camp stove/1/$31.00
Hardware/20 pound propane tanks/2/$100.00
Hardware/Shortwave radio/1/$19.00
(Get an external shortwave antenna to pick up weak, far-away transmissions.)
Category Total: $1,449.50
Batteries/AAA rechargable/4/$11.00
Batteries/AA rechargable/3/$11.00
Batteries/AA/AAA charger/1/$14.00
Batteries/AA standard batteries/36/$17.75 (may begin to leak after 10 years)
Batteries/AAA standard batteries/100/$40.00 (may begin to leak after 10 years)
Category Total: $93.75
Security/Colt AR6720 Rifle/1/$900.00
Security/223 rem Ammo/247 rounds/$150.00
Security/Colt 30-round magazines/6/$72.00
Security/#1 12 gauge shotgun shells/5 rounds/$6.50 (obviously need more than 5 rounds…this is just a space filler)
Security/Night Vision Viewer (IR)/1/$100
(store ammo in an air-tight container with some desiccant packets (available from Amazon) to keep it dry)
Category Total: $1,228.50
Grand Total $4193.50
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