Food in an Infected WorldThis is a featured page

This page is a project currently being restructured by Survivor_Gill. Contributions, editing and advice is appreciated and still welcomed. For large additions or major changes please make contact beforehand. Thank you for your understanding.


Introduction
Essential to any long term survival plan is access to a balanced diet. Not only should your source of food be clean, but also needs to fulfill the demanding needs of your daily tasks.

Food distribution is a vital component in all major modern cultures. Most significant urban centers demand large amounts of produce and foodstuffs to be constantly transported in to sustain such a large concentrated population. Refrigeration and humidity control are automated systems which are vital to preserve a large portion of these food resources. In a large scale epidemic disaster, these are systems which will likely fail. Damage to the available electrical grid and the effective dissolution of local governing bodies will lead to a total cessation of food supply to any urban area. As well, the total amount of resources available in your area will decrease due to decay.

An individual or group expecting to survive an indefinite amount of time in a large scale epidemic will require diligence, patience and knowledge. Effectively managing and rationing existing supplies will be essential in any scenario. In the event that such a disaster lasts longer than existing supplies allow, one must carefully consider how to acquire more. A number of options exist and are decisions that should be based on the circumstances of the situation, the individuals involved, and most importantly; the desire to live.

This article addresses food in all its forms. Please seek out [insert link] page for more details on managing clean water and other vital supplies such as medicine and weapons.

Sources of Food
It will likely be a challenge to sustain your own persons indefinitely in a worst-case collapse scenario. Deciding how to expend your limited time and labor to maintain a reasonable stock, and to still achieve vital defense and maintenance goals will be essential. To better investigate all plausible obstacles, we must assume a true worse-case scenario. Not all obstacles will necessarily present themselves depending on individual situation.

Stored Food - Maintaining a large stock of fresh and non-perishable foodstuffs is a smart move for any person under normal circumstances. This is one of the first steps of emergency preparedness. As demonstrated in many recent natural disasters, this can be a deciding factor for survival of the smallest regional disaster scenarios. (to be expanded)

Scavenging and Looting - (to be expanded.)

Growing Food - (to be reorganized)

Hunting, Fishing and Foraging - (to be reorganized)


Feeding An Army and Yourself -


There are a couple of ways to avoid the whole starvation thing:
1) Store or raid for long shelf life foods
2) You live off the land, gathering nuts and berries
3) You grow your own food
4) You hunt your food
5) You have played enough RPG's to learn how to conjure food and water.
6) Watch the Survival Report on youtube for a how-to on food in a post-apocalyptic-world.

The key to having a good food stash in your basement is shelf life (at room temperature). Here is a list of items and some rough shelf lives.

Food that Lasts
  • MRE's- Meals Ready-to-Eat- At 70º they will last around 8 years, at 80º 6 years, 95º 4 years. They cost anywhere from $6-$8 per full meal and are commonly sold in cases of 12 meals, costing about $65-85. Some entrees are very good, while some are not so good. My favorite is Chicken Parmesan Pasta. Home made MRE's are cheap, but don't last nearly as long. A MRE bag is basically a soft can with a sterile inside, a vacuum sealed plastic bag isn't...
    • PROS: LONG shelf life, durable, silent to carry/eat, tons of calories/fat, full nutritious meal (includes meat entree, a fruit/nut side dish, desert, napkin, matches, drink mix (coffee, orange stuff, etc), spoon, flame less heater, some contain beverages), compact, byproducts (plastic casing, cardboard casing, matches) can be used for other things.
    • CONS: Some taste bad, require water for heating (1/4c or so), often expensive compared to tinned goods.
MRE caseMRE contents

  • Canned goods- If stored in a cool, dry location, high acid foods such as tomatoes and other fruit will store up to 18 months; whereas, low acid foods such as meat and vegetables will last anywhere from 2 to 5 years.
    • PROS: Able to choose your exact meal, can be stored in an organized manner, has liquid in it
    • CONS: If you see a dent in the can, it's most likely gone bad. Limited variety can cause vitamin deficiencies, medium weight, makes noise easily, requires can opener
    • The UNGODLY- Hormel products: Spam, dried beef, and Dainty Moore stews just don't go bad...ever...really...like never... you catching on?

Food in an Infected World - Zombie Survival & Defense Wiki


  • Dehydrated foods- You can find a 6 months supply of dehydrated food at Costco here. This 23 lbs bucket will last you and several other people 3-6 months, long enough for you to start planting your own crops.
    • PROS: Able to choose your exact meal, can be stored in an organized manner, very compact, will last 20 years before going bad
    • CONS: No water in the food

  • Assorted foods
    • Twinkie- Stated shelf life of 25 days, but who bothers with the expiration date?
    • Emergency food bars- 5 year shelf life, full of calories, protein, and other goodies
    • Pasta/Beans/Rice- 2 year shelf life, can be used long after but won't taste as good. Modified rice such as One Minute Rice don't last as long.
    • Oatmeal- Lasts much longer than the expiration date says. 28 year oatmeal was found to still taste good and be nutritious
    • Honey and Wheat: these foods never go bad, and have an indefinite shelf life. Honey just wont go off, but you wont get a lot of the things you need from it. Thousand year old wheat has been found in the pyramids, and still sprouted. stock up now! Honey can be used for everything- from eating to antiseptic to curing headaches. In small doses it is a source of energy but eat enough and it is a mild sedative.
    • Pancake Mix- Just add water
    • 5 Hour Energy- Drink the small content and its like you ate a whole meal energy for 5 hours!

Live off the land eating plants and animals
  • Animals for food
    • Fishing- Learn how to do it before Z-Day, it will make things much easier...
      • Unless you have a stream flowing through your fortress, be very careful of Zack attacking you while fishing
      • Setting up fish traps can be very time consuming and will not yield good results if not well constructed. Consult a survival handbook on how to do this.
      • Limb fishing can be used if your base is near water. You basically cut some fishing line, tie it to a tree (securely), tie a hook to the other end, add weights, bait, and let it sit in the water. When/if a fish bites, the tree will keep it there. Check from once to 4 times a day depending on situation (how long bait stays on, time between bites, risk to check lines)This method is illegal in some areas so you may need to wait for law and order to break down before you try it.
      • Use easy to find bait- while digging a hole for a latrine in your zombie base, collect all the worms and use them as bait. Start an earthworm bin to propagate and collect earthworm castings (poop) which plants will LOVE you for giving them. Check out vermicomposting.
    • Hunting
      • Use a gun/bow to shoot an animal. Gut out anything you won't eat before bringing it to your stronghold to avoid rotting waste.
      • Your gun noise will attract Zeds like a 13 year old boy seeing a Playboy left on a sidewalk, be wary.
      • Zombies might be able to smell blood, bringing fresh kills to your base might mean mass zombie gathering.
      • Here is an analogy for fresh kills. You are the leopard, the tree is your base, the hyena are flies, the lion is a zombie or a hundred, except they won't go away.
      • Don't underestimate the nutrition of grubs. Information of edible insects can be found here.
  • Trapping
  • Plants for food
      • Wilderness Survival is a website with lots of information, and is based on the Army 21-76 field manual.
      • Plants can supplement your diet but it is hard to rely completely of foraged edible plants


  • Warning: Meat Might be Infected, eat with caution.

Growing your own food
I'm sure you all have imagined yourself growing all the food you need and living off the land, right? It takes planning, hard work, attention to quality, and lots of continuous learning. You might mess up your first crop or two, but everyone goes through that. If you keep at it, you will learn from your early mistakes and eventually grow some tasty food. A farming guide would be HUGE, so use google or some of the links on this page.

The food to be grown can be broken into a couple different categories: fruits, vegetables, grain, livestock. Once you have grown the food, you will need a place and method of storing it, plan ahead.
  • Growing Vegetables and Fruits
    • The best vegetables to grow are ones that can sustain you throughout the whole year. You want to be able to have the fruits (or vegetables) of your labor around all year to feed you.
    • Explaining how to grow each type of vegetable/fruit would take about 150 pages, so check out this site on sustainable farming.
    • There are tons of good books out there on how to grow vegetables/fruits organically using stuff like chicken poop, compost piles, etc.
    • To make the food last almost forever turn them into preserves.
  • Growing Grains/Field crops
    • Check out this website on how to grow assortedfield crops.
    • To make the food last almost forever turn them into preserves.
  • Raising Livestock
    • Chickens: They can be fed anything from old bread to vegetable skins. They will produce eggs for you which are high in protein and many other things you need along with some of the best fertilizer you can get your hands on. A guide can be found here on raising chickens. If you are worried about noise,roosters will be a problem, but without a rooster, you won't have any fertile eggs. If you don't have a rooster, you might also have a hen that will stop laying eggs and act like a rooster, but at least it doesn't make the loud noise!
    • Goats: They can produce wool, milk, meat, and fertilizer. They are known to get sick a lot and have a high mortality rate compared to other farm animals. To make up for this, over the years the does will have an average breeding rate above 2 per doe. Goats eat a lot, simply put. Unless you are in a place where the goats can graze on wild vegetation, I wouldn't recommend having them. If someone knows more about raising goats, please add.
    • To make the food last almost forever turn them into preserves. (just kidding)

Cooking food
  • Bread without instant yeast: If you have always wondered how people 5000 years ago made bread without yeast in a package, here is one way. Grind grains into a flour, mix with water and let stand for 8-10 hours. Letting the flour-water mixture sit will let "wild yeast" start to grow in the mixture causing it to be a leavening agent (makes bread rise). After you have the starter mix, mix in more flour, water, and salt to make the dough. You can follow the principles in this video about no-knead bread and substitute "wild yeast" for regular yeast. I'll try making bread like this in a couple days when I have time. Don't get that bread wet or it will grow mold!
  • Feel free to add more!



More to come, lots to be revised. Make corrections/ideas in the comments please.


Shelf-life of foods:
Many people seem to think EVERYTHING will expire eventually, but here are the real use-by dates:

Use within six months
Powdered milk
Dried fruit
Dry, crisp crackers (in package)
Potatoes
Use within one year
Canned or packaged meats and condensed vegetable soups
Tuna
Canned fruits, fruit juices and vegetables
Ready to eat cereals and uncooked instant cereals (in package)
Peanut butter
Jelly
Hard candy and canned nuts
Vitamin C and other vitamins as recommended on labels

May be stored indefinately:
Wheat
Vegetable oils
Dried corn
Baking powder
Soybeans
Instant coffee, tea and cocoa
Salt, pepper, etc.
Soft drinks
White rice
Bouillon products
Dry pastas
Dry mixes (cake, pancake, bisquick, etc.)
Dehydrated foods (soups, noodles)
Syrup (You can also store perishables in syrup, it is after sugar)



John_234
John_234
Latest page update: made by John_234 , Jul 17 2010, 9:08 PM EDT (about this update About This Update John_234 Moved from: Bugging In - John_234

No content added or deleted.

- complete history)
More Info: links to this page
Started By Thread Subject Replies Last Post
NotAlice Information Necromancy 11 Oct 1 2011, 10:57 PM EDT by poke2000
Thread started: Sep 11 2011, 12:25 PM EDT  Watch
Back in the mists of antiquity, there were these things called books and they were good. And in these books were esoteric things called references. With these a person could learn more detailed information on many topics. Ah, heck, what I'm saying is that there is gold in them-thar libraries. Case in point:

Some people are old enough to remember when survivalists worried about nuclear war(anyone who grew up during the Cuban Missle Crisis!) and the books from then were geared toward that issue.

Nuclear War Survival Skills by Cresson Kearney was very sought after for it's solid research. Among it's references is a paper on feeding folks after a nuclear war. At the time, I had to order a copy from the Feds and some bugger walked off with it a year or two later. Well, today I got to thinking about that paper and pulled up a copy of NWSS online to see if it was still around.

http://www.survivalring.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Maintaining-Nutritional-Adequacy-During-A-Prolonged-Food-Crisis.pdf

And it was. Free, downloadable, printable. It's about using available resources to feed a devastated country using expedient means. There's info on fireless cooking, filtering water, sprouting, and various nutritious ways of keeping a countrywide population fed. Is this useless because it came out in 1979? I wonder what other goodies are lurking in those older books, what do you think?
Do you find this valuable?    
Show Last Reply
Mountain_Stork finding wild food and my questions 12 Aug 12 2010, 9:52 AM EDT by Agrippa
Thread started: Feb 4 2009, 12:36 PM EST  Watch
pine needles provide a fair amout of vitamin c and can stave off scuvy if you are living off of mostly meat

every part of the cattail is edible and the pollin can be used to make decent no hassle pankakes
if you are planning on living off animals keep in mind that carnavores and scavangers may have eatend a twice dead zombie so you may want to avoid them or at the very least avoid the digestive organs and surrounding tissue

only eat animals you find dead as a last resort especally if it appears that they were not killed by something else odds are they died of a deases and there is a good chance that you could get it either by ingestion or in the process of skinning and gutting the animal bubonic plauge is precent in the southwest u.s. and it is the last thing you want

If you see bear grills do it you usually want to do the exact opposite, especailly the parts that are in his commercails those stunts are pulled around a trained medical staff and are used to attract veiwers the man is full of himself, steve O from jackass could give you more advice on whats edible and not poisinous than he could. the best show for finding out what is actually edible in the wild is probly survior man or any thing on the travel channel about primitive or third world cultures.

urinating is your bodys way to flush exess salts and toxins from your body the concentration of these things will be higher if you are dehydrated your piss will contain almost as mush salt as sea water by the time you are thirsty enough to consider drinking it and you dont want that going back into your body.

my questions
is it possible to grind the grains of wild grasses into edible flour?
are pidgions meat eating scavengers or do they just stick to plant matter and human trash?

2  out of 2 found this valuable. Do you?    
Keyword tags: None
Show Last Reply
LordSod Growing food/storing food. 11 May 4 2010, 1:24 PM EDT by JPTank
Thread started: Apr 24 2010, 4:39 PM EDT  Watch
Theres an error on this page, where it says use canned foods within a year.

many canned foods have use-by dates of many years, and a lot of canned foodstuffs can be used several dozens of years later. of course dry foods are also very good..

rergarding livestock, it is much more efficient to eat the vegetables that you would use to raise livestock. i love meat as much as anyone but unless you had plenty of crops to spare, using it to feed animals isn't a good idea.

a field would be ideal, but you could also grow in an urban setting.
if i had a lot of people, id get a large building such as a school/office block for example, with a large roof and make it secure.. also more room indoors. a school will have a fenced-off perimiter already, but barricaded windows +further/extended perimeters would be preferable.
I'd use the roof to grow as many different crops as i could, if neccessary and if i had means to generate power, hook up the apropriate lighting to feed the plants if they were struggling. also some kind of pump to water would be needed, or a lot of labour.
most fruit + veg seeds can be found in garden centres, as can soil. failing that just dig up as much soft soily earth as you can find. you could use a whole range of stuff to as fertillizer

also a roof could be a permenant post for a lookout, an early warning for a perimeter breach.
Do you find this valuable?    
Show Last Reply
Showing 3 of 23 threads for this page - view all

Related Content

  (what's this?Related ContentThanks to keyword tags, links to related pages and threads are added to the bottom of your pages. Up to 15 links are shown, determined by matching tags and by how recently the content was updated; keeping the most current at the top. Share your feedback on Wetpaint Central.)