Living on the starvation line

I’ve been thinking for a while about consumption during the aftermath of an event. The time when we are the grey man and keeping in contact with others. Most of us won’t be able to hunt nor grow anything because the food will be scavenged by others and we could be hurt in the struggle. We will solely be reliant on our stored foods. That stored food we have will be finite and we should be looking at making that food last. It is going to be what keeps you alive. We simply won’t be able to make portions anything like we do now and we won’t be able to have such a wide variety of items in our food. We will end up with a simple diet with little variation after a while and will need to get used to it.

All over the world at this moment in time there are millions of people on a subsidence diet. They simply do not have the capability of growing food nor the money to buy any. Yet they live on that. They don’t do much else but they live. That diet is literally a handful of rice and whatever bugs there are in it.

Back here we can buy 1Kg of rice for 40p. Bought some last week. The rice needs water to cook and you can cook a portion of rice in a cup of water. That gives you barely enough sustenance to keep yourself alive. I found that there were no bugs so I introduced a oxo cube or other flavouring to give it some taste. In the UK you can also add some greens to give it some vitamins. Dandelions or nettles are easily found and they will help with the grey man cover. Of course to avoid a major shock to our systems and a sudden drop in vitamins and calories we will need to cook reasonable portions at first and wean ourselves on to our much reduced intake. We could be on that for a long time so we should plan for that. Hopefully, your neighbours will go and you will have few raiders, although I doubt it, and you can get onto a decent diet earlier than 15 months.

I also like pasta, 55p a Kg, this is interchangeable with the rice to give you a bit of variety. Both are cheap, easily stored and simply need cooking in water to prepare. Add whatever extras you have and away you go. No extras? Simply eat the basic pasta or rice and it will keep you going.

Just in case though, basic rice, and pasta, with a few greens, some flavouring and the odd meat product from your garden or stores will keep you alive for a long time. Not very healthy in the long term but alive.

I have plenty of pasta and rice and we have one or the other at least four times a week. It is one of our staple foods. Couple that with the odd tin of meat and veg during the week and some flavouring and you will have a gourmet delight although at this point you may not think so. Eating slightly more than a starvation diet and making sure you have greens and meat will mean you may have boring food, but you will have moved on to it slowly and will be OK with it and it will maximise the life of your stores. Maximising your stores and living on basics improves your chances of survival.

Thus rice and pasta are the basics of my stores. Almost everything else will use one of those as a base and the flavourings will be the easiest and cheapest way to vary that diet. I do have plenty to put on top to ensure we get the protein and the vitamins and I do have some tinned potatoes as example as an occasional alternative but rice and pasta are the core and with them being currently at 40p and 55p a Kg you can stock up quite a lot to last you a long time.