How To Stock Your Disaster Pantry

 

 

 

 

 

When disaster strikes and your family, friends, and neighborhood need your help, the last place you want to be is stuck in a food line. A backup food supply that’s easy to manage and won’t break the bank is a cornerstone of disaster prep. The biggest question: How much food is enough?

FEMA and the Red Cross suggest a two-week supply. On its website, the Mormon Church advises a more world-weary approach, advising its flock to keep a three-month supply of food “that is part of your normal daily diet” on hand. It’s not a bad goal, but the commercial food grid is usually up and running in much less time, so we suggest starting with a month’s backup. How much is that?

“We need to debunk the one-size-fits-all solution to how much food you need,” says survival instructor Cody Lundin, author of the excellent disaster-survival manual When All Hell Breaks Loose and pony-tailed star of Dual Survival. “Age, sex, weight, height all factor in. Just ask any mom with three teenage boys who play football if they will eat the same amount of food as her neighbors with younger kids.”

The first step is to figure out the basal metabolic rate—the amount of energy a body uses at rest—for each member of your family. Keep in mind that in a disaster situation, people aren’t usually at rest, so add more food to compensate. Visit a site like this one to calculate your family’s BMR. Our sample family has a husband and wife in their 40s (4400 calories per day), and a son and daughter between 9 and 13 (2400 calories per day). We then added 1000 calories as a cushion, putting our requirements at 7800 calories per day and 234,000 per month.

Remember, you don’t have to buy it all at once. Each week, add a few extra items to the shopping list until you’ve filled up your basement shelves to your satisfaction. We built up a sample store of goods for this photo as a guide to the sorts of foods that store well and could keep a family of four well-fed and sane through the aftermath.