So.... You think you are all prepared for "Doomsday". When the "Schumer The Hits The Fan" you and your loved ones have a years supply of food, water and fuel. All set, ready to survive.
You have even talked to your kids, your parents, your distant family and neighbors, even your more distant friends and co-workers about bad times and being prepared for economic uncertainty. You have shown them articles in the news, the charts, and you may even had friends of yours from Russia and Ukraine talk about the collapse and hunger they have lived through personally.
Instead of listening, they go right on with their consumer lifestyle, still making car payments, house payments, ATV payments, boat payments, vacation payments and the ultimate stupidity, credit card payments.
So, what will you do when these same idiots, many of them you may love, who may have saved your life, or raised you, or fed you as a child, or helped you move or even helped you build your no payment house, come knocking on your door wanting food? Will you say "hey, I warned you" ? Will you truly tell them to bug off? Could you?
Would you want to live if you sent away your parents and your sister with her kids to starve because they were stupid? Could you or would you make "Sophie's choice"? I do not want to put myself in a position where I decide life AND death of those I love.
I would do it if I had to. But I am a bit weird. I will do ANYTHING to protect my children. ANYTHING.
But I would be a lot happier if I didn't need to do that. My quality of life would be greatly diminished if I made that decision. I do not want to put myself in a position where I decide life AND death of those I love, or even like.
So instead of being unhappy at the possibility and worrying, I will do something about it.
I call my solution the BUG-IN BARREL.
I have several of them prepared and will put more together soon. It cost me about $100 right now to assemble one. In July or August, it should cost only $75 by going to the farmer and loading my truck in the field. One BUG-IN BARREL should keep one person alive and well for at the least one year.
The BUG-IN BARREL is not your normal one year supply of food that any half-way intelligent family has in the pantry. The pantry is for normal foods you eat, bought ahead and replenished as it comes on sale. Prices on most food items have doubled since I moved to Missouri. Some more than doubled. Having them in the pantry is just plain smart. Nothing has gone down in price. You also store your own produce there.
The BUG-IN BARREL is different. It is full of cheap staples in their crudest form that stave off starvation in a "Schumer Hits The Fan" worst case scenario. The 45 gallon BUG-IN BARREL is full of 180# wheat, 50# corn, 50# beans, a little 20# rice and about one cup of DE., Diatomaceous earth. That's it. A water and air tight, bug proof container with 300 pounds of raw product, which when cooked will be 375 pounds of bread, 100 pounds of cooked beans 50 pounds of cooked rice. You can live on that and live healthy with a bit of meat, if you are not bored to death.
I chose wheat for health reasons. Whole wheat is about 10% protein and plenty of vitamins and such. Rice is junk. No vitamins and hardly a drop of protein, just starch. Whole wheat will store FOREVER. Rice is a processed milled thing that will not.
Add yeast to ground whole wheat and you have bread, more protein and a more complete protein. If you are too stupid and lazy to make bread, just boil it and eat it. Or just smash the wheat up, add water and yeast, wait 3 days and drink it. That kept the Egyptian slaves alive for generations. You can and you should sprout some wheat for even better health.
Beans add protein and when eaten with a bit of meat are good for you. Beans alone are not a complete protein.
Corn by itself, ground and eaten, will cause Pellagra. In small amounts it is fine and if processed with lime into hominy or masa, it is a good food.
Diatomaceous Earth kills bugs by puncturing their outer layer and causing them to dehydrate. There will be weevils in grain. DE will kill them before they spread. DE is in all processed foods, and meets all organic protocols. There is no good reason to open a your survival barrel and find all the food turned to bugs. Been there, done that, really disgusting. Use some DE.
I buy 45 gallon barrels that haul soap and are air tight, with metal rings to make the seal. I also buy 55 gallon barrels that haul concentrated fruit juice. These have the same plastic lids and metal rings that are tight.
For bottles I use empty 2 litre soda bottles and empty 1/2 gallon fruit juice bottles. Just rinse them out and allow to air dry. If they smell fruity, no problem, the food is fine. We also use empty milk cartons, washed and bleached out. I make a funnel out of a 2 litre bottle and use a 1" pvc pipe coupling to hold it on the target bottle.
I also fill the barrel with Co2. You could do that or use dry ice before you seal it to displace the oxygen. Or you could toss in a bunch of O2 absorbers. All will work fine.
MAKING A BUG-IN BARREL
To Make a BUG-IN BARREL, fill a bunch of empty jars or bottles with rice, beans and/or corn that have a bit of DE (I use @ 1/6 Cup per 50#) mixed with the stuff. I pour in some wheat, put a bunch of bottles in the barrel, pour in more wheat mixed with about 1/6 cup of DE per 50# sack. Then more bottles and more wheat. I fill it right to the top. Then I displace the O2 with co2 and seal it tight. I mean tight. We usually need to hammer the ring around the barrel to get it to seal.
Some of the barrels are here on the farm, some in a friend’s garage, and some tucked away in a friend’s root cellar miles from here. Spread the risk of disaster (by disaster, I mean confiscation) around a bit.
If things stay peachy and you never use them, big deal. You feed the grain to your chickens. For me it is a small price to pay for not telling a stupid family member to piss-off.
P.S. I forgot to add salt, 1 gallon to the Bug-In Barrel, and a jar of yeast. That is not something I would need here, but most people would want to add them, to make the Bug In Barrel a "stand-alone" item. I have loads of both stored here. Old expired yeast in a glass jar is good for at the least, 6 years. We have some here that we use, that has an expiration date of 2005. We still use them.
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