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How prepared are you in the event of a national emergency?
How long do you think you could survive?
I'm not a "prepper" by any means, but I am curious about how long most of us could hang in there if there was some kind of breakdown of society, natural disaster, or any sort of emergency situation where everyone was ordered to bunker down and stay put for an extended period of time.
To answer that for myself I recently tried a little experiment. Now keep in mind that this was done while the lights, heat and water were still on and working. It was a food-only test, nothing more.
Here's what I did
Several months ago I decided to see just how long I could hold out just on the food I had on hand in the house. In fact the situation was kind of forced on me as my back was particularly bad (and still is in fact), so I thought it might be a good time to try it. There was no trip to the grocery store to stock up or anything, just a passive instant start to the experiment.
The thing of it is, as a normal lifestyle habit I have always had a certain amount of dry goods, canned goods, and other foodstuffs on hand in the house. My parents always did it and I guess it just stuck with me. Anyway I was, in the end, able to hold out for close to two months before I finally broke down and had to get some groceries. But even at that point I still had enough food to hold out another few weeks, if not longer.
However, if the power grid and water systems of the city had been shut down that would be an entirely different story, especially in winter here. As well, I don't own a gun currently, so security would be lacking. I do have some camping gear but nothing designed for keeping one alive through months of twent to thirty below zero weather.
But on the food front I'm encouraged at least. I ran out of a lot of things over the two months but still had a lot of things to work with and make great meals. Rice, oatmeal, canned goods, dried pasta, peanut butter, etc, were all things that helped get me the furthest.
So in the event you suddenly couldn't get out to bring food in, for whatever reason, how long do you think you could hold out? It's an important question in this day and age.
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