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Hopefully things would never come to this, but the Church of the Latter Day saints believe in storing food for emergencies. Preferably for a year, there’s several reasons why they do it both scripture based and a general teaching to be not too reliant on others in times of need.

Of course, not everyone lives next door to a family of Latter Day Saints, and it’s a bit rude to assume they’re going to share all that stockpiled food with you. So, if you’re thinking of starting to stock up a bit visiting a few LDS websites is a good place to start. Ok – lets get on with that food calculation..

Container Packaging and standeyo both have identical calculators. Stockupfood.com actually has a login system so you can track how much you need and how much you use. If you’re planning shorter requirements then simplylivingsmart.com has a good adjustable calculator. The majority of the calculators don’t include fresh fruit or veg – so don’t forget to add plenty of vitamins into those calculations too.

I put in 1 year for a single adult and this is what you get.

• Grain: 400lbs (wheat, oats, barley – cereals)
• Legumes: 60lbs (beans, split peas, lentils etc.)
• Dairy: 30lbs (powdered milk, and cheese etc.)
• Sugars: 60lbs (honey, syrup, brown/white sugar etc.)
• Leavening agents: 6lbs (powdered eggs, yeast etc.)
• Salt: 6lbs
• Fats: 30lbs (butter, vegetable oil etc.)
• Water: 14 gallons (2 week supply in storage)

If your looking for a calculator that includes fruit use this one from thefoodguys.com.

Of course as far as water is concerned you’d  need a filtration / purification system. Of course with any food storage you need to regularly rotate stock to avoid spoilage, and to keep the shelf life current. Storing by age, keeping the newest stock at the bottom of the store. Then there’s the other side of storage – for those super wealthy food storage types who can afford freeze dryed ready meals. Mountainhouse.com or AlpineSurvival and Nitro-Pak all have freeze dried food with a 25 year shelf life. They do boxed 72 hour sets of food, or can even provide a full years supply.

SurvivalDigest.com also has some further links and reading over here.

Here’s where solar power comes in, it’s totally silent, and it’s practically maintenance free but the problem with general usage solar power is the panels aren’t usually up to the task of powering much more than the odd light bulb, and you need a constant supply of bright weather.

One of the problems with typical solar / battery systems is that they’re incredibly heavy, or need lots of floor space (like the powercube) or they’re dog-ugly like the Harvester. There’s a new product on the market that changes all that. Called the The Solar Stik™ Breeze. The Concept for the Solar Stik was born out of a need for marine based power on boats that had no room for large scale solar arrays, it was then a natural progression to adapt the Solar Stik to land based use, and more recently add wind power to the configuration so that power generation can continue through the night.
Once the system is set up, power drawn from wind / sun is fed into a battery bank. The entire system is designed to be portable and easily transported. Additionally, multiple units can be connected together if needed for particularly demanding sites. The panels come with a 25 year warranty. Unlike you average generator which typically comes with a 1-3 year warranty. Here’s the YouTube promo..

Click here to view the embedded video.

At around $8,000 the starting price for the Stik is slightly more expensive than other solar devices in this bracket, however they don’t feature the newer technology found within these panels that provide improved power generation.

Visit the product site here for further information.

Make your own, the UK Home Office even had a handy little reference guide on domestic nuclear shelters ranging from your basic dirt covered hole, to a purpose built concrete bunker.

A paper bag offers slightly less protection

www.disastershelters.net offer shelters ranging from $41,950 and up, they can provide a range of blast doors, air filtration systems and other accessories.

A nice place to to keep your wine in

www.americanbombshelter.com has a very low cost $16,000 kit although you’ll probably be looking at more like $30,000 by the time construction is complete.

Custom made to your requirements

http://www.bomb-shelter.net/ is a off-the shelf solution by Radius Defence. The shelters are designed to be buried in the ground, and their product range consists of smaller 1 and 2 man shelters to ones big enough to house many families. starting from £41,000 to over $2 Million for a shelter than can support 50 – 200 people.

A bomb shelter disguised as a grey bowling ball

Of course if you’re talking really long term survival and have a cool $1.5 million to spend then you could do worse than get yourself a self-contained climate protection complex from survivalcentre.com they start with a basic $59,995 central module and you can build on from there. They can even arrive fully stocked.

Lego style connected shelters

Magic Moonbeams are invisible, or as they’re more commonly known – radiation, so how do you visualise this wonderful invisible world. There’s all sorts of devices that can tell you what’s going on around you.

Dosimeters, radiation detectors, Geiger counters and general devices that go clickety click are easily available online. There’s also army surplus, or you can even make your own. Some of the commercial ones are extremely sensitive, able to pick up normal everyday levels of background radiation. Other more personal items such as dosimeters are designed to measure your day-day exposure to radioactivity and provide a warning when you may be encountering harmful levels. The typical radiation detector that you might be familiar with from movies is the CDV-700 it’s from the cold war era, and can detect alpha, beta, and gamma radiation.

A wide selection of geiger counters are available from www.anythingradioactive.com with the majority under £100 of course there’s also an Ebay search. If you’re feeling more adventurous there are guides online too.

The Lifesave bottle designed by British inventor Michael Prichard is a big breakthrough in portable filtration. It won the soldier Technology 2007 award and also won best in test of bushcraft and survival skills magazine. It’s has a unique filter that removes 99.9999% of all bacteria, viruses, cysts, parasites, and fungi from the water supply. It’s 15 nanometres filter can cut out almost all viruses which are generally around 25 nanometres.

Not content with sitting back Michael Prichard has continued to improve on the device, adding the lifesaver hydrocarry to the product range. This is basically a rucksack mounted shoulder tube, and integrated dualpump combination to let soldiers quickly filter water without having to remove the device from their backpack.

For larger scale delivery of filtered water, they are also working on larger water containers for family’s. There is even a seawater version due out soon which should be an essential addition to every sailors toolkit. We hope that the costs of these bottle will come down enough so that they can be distributed to relief centres in 3rd world countries. So many lives could be saved if victims of hurricane, flood, and tsunami disasters had access to these kinds of devices.

The lifesaver bottle currently retails for £116.95 inc VAT, it can be bought online, and shipped internationally directly from www.lifesaversystems.com